Was Jinnimag Thread Removed?

[Phil Holland]

Not sure I follow what you are saying. Isn't the whole issue they just rehoused SSD's and not even the best rated ones? Where is the engineering in that? In terms of the money spent to develop the RedMags? You mean the enclosure? That's very little design.

A key thing a lot of people are not thinking about at all when discussing this is the good deal of stress testing and R&D to even choose the media. It wasn't like one day they woke up and said "dude we're going to just toss this MSATA drive into an enclosure and call it a day". At the time MSATA was fairly new, there were a host of directions to go with the media. And yes the metal enclosure is even a stress tested thing. I know for a fact based on some posts here that there's various torque, weight, temperature, and other rigorous tests done to the cameras and media. I think Jarred posted one of the cameras frozen and even iced over in their temperature chamber that still booted. That's outside of the data rate tests to ensure non-stop recording without buffer issues, which the cameras still have warnings for, but I haven't seen them in many years.

And yes, the firmware in question with the previous thread has everything to do with what's going on within the camera and how it's writing data to the card. The various error codes we've seen when things go bad allude to the time spent to communicate with the media and do various checks and logging of issues. In fact, occasionally you'll get a warning that you should likely even securely format your media if things are segmented or some sort of firmware update recommends you do so.

Yes, on the surface it looks pretty cut and dry on what's inside the enclosure, but pretty much everybody is overlooking what it took to even put that stuff in there.

We'll never really know what RED's bottom line is on the media and the profits desired, but all of this plus the labor and support that comes with it has a cost associated with it outside of the base cost of components.


In the mix of all of this is the weirdness of technology evolving, red colored REDMAGs to indicate newer faster high speed cards over the OG black ones, larger capacity/faster ones being made, and the eventual move to the MINI-MAG form factor with the newer drives and it appears that there might have been some newer media overlap. I cracked open a few of my older REDMAGs out of curiosity (like in 2014 I think) and they are older drives compared to the stuff in the current MINI-MAGs. Also the media bay going from SATA 2.X to SATA 3.X, which we know even based on the older media readers versus the newer ones.

Just my POV really, the guy making these videos is mostly weaponizing these concepts it seems to highlight just the components in there and none of the work that even lead up to the design of the mags nor any of the history of media standards like SATA advancing. And just on the design side, you'll notice the mags don't fall out of the camera unless you are hitting some pretty notable G-force torques or dropping it from a decent height.

There's engineering going on both on the hardware and software side of things. It's just not the POV being put forward by the individual pushing out the viral stuff. And mostly this is just exactly what he's after it seems.


More or less why I'm just beating the drum and rhythm to the tune of tell RED their media costs too much or want different drives in there or want 3rd party media or whatever. They'll take that feedback. The viral stuff leading into harassment and borderline stalking behavior is pretty much never going to be listened to, within this community it led to very heated debates with insults being slung left and right, that's not something that should be happening and at it's core is part of what this guy wants to happen. And as I mentioned in a previous thread, there's still posts here on REDUSER where people cracked open the mags around 2012 and knew what was in there, even some older images and discussion online can be found, this is just being brought back up due to whatever history Jinni and RED have, which is all publicly view-able in terms of the timeline of legal activities between Washington through California and who went after who first. As a moderator, this again happened before. The only thing that has changed is the jilted angle of somebody pretty pissed off at RED and looking to clearly have a negative impact on their company and there's clearly more cameras out there.

And to the credit of Cinema 5D, they went to the source to get the official word without slashing around blindly with skepticism, conspiracy theories, and whatever. And yet again, I'll just note from the previous thread, all of this stuff has gone through rigorous FCC teardowns, NASA, and military scrutiny about the nomenclature and core components. If there was house worth burning down we would have heard it from a different source.

 

[Misha Engel]

Actually, as I understand it, the first camera using compressed RAW (Cineform) codec was Silicon Imaging. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Imaging
The first 4k digital camera was Dalsa Origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalsa_Origin
And R3D is based on existing JPEG2000 wavelet compression. It was readily apparent until Red started encrypting R3Ds.
So, basically, Red combined all three elements together, patented it, which became the basis of Red cameras.
So, I don't think, there was a technological breakthrough. It was probably a breakthrough more on the engineering and PR front.

Ehhh... YES.
And since Hollywood is in the US, the patents are valid.

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Kudos to Phil for pointing out some of the many steps involved in creating a reliable camera media ecosystem for professional production usage. Recording up to 960GBs at 300MB/s, in a small and durable form factor, without dropping frames, might seem trivial today - but when dev started in 2011 or so...

Cheers - #19

 

[Christopher S Johnson]

It really bums me out that we somehow get sidetracked into talking about wavelet compression instead of using this very unique opportunity to figure out as a community how we think Reduser should be moderated.

I don’t think it was right to nuke the thread. It could have been locked, with the offending material deleted, and the rest of the very useful information left in tact. I’ve been following this from the first post, and the only thing I’m certain of is there are a lot of differing opinions. But we can’t make any progress discussing those opinions if we have to be battling censorship as well.

 

[Donald MJ Anderson]

It really bums me out that we somehow get sidetracked into talking about wavelet compression instead of using this very unique opportunity to figure out as a community how we think Reduser should be moderated.

I don’t think it was right to nuke the thread. It could have been locked, with the offending material deleted, and the rest of the very useful information left in tact. I’ve been following this from the first post, and the only thing I’m certain of is there are a lot of differing opinions. But we can’t make any progress discussing those opinions if we have to be battling censorship as well.

The laughable thing is this thread is on the exact same topic. Offending posts in the earlier thread could easily have been deleted. The video link removed. You know...it could have been moderated.

They hope memories are short.

 

[Phil Holland]

I'm cool with that Chris. I might go back and edit out about half that thread as it diverged into a bit of chaos which resulted in bans and investigating a couple people who were not as they seemed. Modding is a fairly thankless act and time consuming, combined with the additional nonsense of not wanting touch this topic for reasons more or less highlighted in the videos released to date you'll notice it's been a policing ghost town and even some professionals have vanished from the grounds, which is not what this community is all about.

Truthfully, the second I was dragged into this very literally on my 40th birthday I didn't have a lot of patience or time to tend with it differently. But at this point it thankfully appears more level headed conversation is taking place (I hope) without the insults, attacks, and accusations. Though at a certain point just the fact that the thread was so big and people didn't read pages of discussion was adding to the problems. Things were repeated a bunch, a growing crowd didnt even know RED made an official statement and were theorycrafting when literally four posts before a statement was made, you can understand some of the issues with growing misinformation which led to worse interactions.

I'm a patient dude full of zen, but we're not going to support the POV directed attacks as the general content ended up more directed that way. Arguably, when should be closing all of these threads, but at the same time I personally see some benefit to some of the potential conversation despite the likely more correct urge to literally not host this conversation here.

I'm just a mod, if anything more needs to occur it will happen or people who own this site will step in or tell mods what needs to transpire. Personally this has somehow already effected my professional life and I very much can't have that. REDuser is more or less a hobby community that I care about, my clients are a different world entirely. It's a lot to ask, but you'll likely never look at this from my perspective, especially in regard to social media, email, and PMs regarding all of this outside of professional ramifications. I'm doing my best in a time where people are showing their worst in a usually positive filmmaking community. The hard part is with that focus of these pieces being aimed to do harm outside of just information, others are also being dragged into the fray and at some point it's important to step in. We extended far past that point. Way too far.

 

[Uday Bhaskar Karra]

Please consider a functionality to limit the number of posts an user can make in a day within the same thread.

 

[Audy Erel]

Some saved pages including the last page from the deleted thread can be accessed via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine ..

 

[C. Burkhart]

As an ex moderator, I am totally on the page when it comes to upholding respect among post-ers. That is without question the priority of every mod. It also underlines the idea of open communication by providing limits, so that people are free to express their opinion without fear of someone with ruffled feathers just going off on them in inappropriate ways. That said, the danger is that mods can inadvertently become the mouthpiece for a manufacturer, especially when the potential conflict of interest by a manufacturer/forum sponsor is so ever present on a forum like this one. In my mind this issue is also at the core of the problem and probably should be discussed as well. I don't know what the answer to that one is. I think Phil does an excellent job of striking a balance in this kind of conundrum and provides a depth of knowledge/historical context which is rare. I honestly don't know how he has enough hours in the day to do his real life job, mod here and have a personal life.

 

[Josh Birch]

Aren't Jinni Mag contradicting themselves? They say the Mini Mags cost X amount of money to make but they are still making a huge mark up?

 

[Johnny Hurberg]

Im not old in the game, not experienced at all.

I do understand some other stuff pretty well thou.

Today in the world of internet, influencers and in tons of forums it might seem hard to distinguish your own path. For me that path have always been laid by my goals. To me it seems there is tons of people with serious equipment without some sort of goal, that seems to create some kind of discomfort and need to discuss stuff that to me is hard to get something useful out of.
The discussions I stumble upon alot when out in the big world of internet is not so much about techniques, tips and tricks of the trade, encurage from more experienced people than myself, funny stories, good interveiws. And for the people saying ”its tons of it out there”.......well how about making even more instead of this other funky kind of hobby that always seems to turn into some kind of shitshow every single time.

The discussion that I do stumble upon alot thou is heated debates about wich camerasystem really is the best, how this or that certain company is better than the other. Hysteric reactions to when new cameras being released, people feeling tricked, fooled, led to believe and all sorts of stuff.

I remember shooting DSLR and new cameras literally raining down on the market, in forums people where complaining and naggin about features they wanted that just where totally unrealistic, to a cost that was even more unrealistic.

I don´t know, maybe its me being green....but it seems weird.

People being upset......"Im leaving this company". Well before and if you do.....sell your cameras to me or someone else because you aint gonna be able to trade them in I guess.

Creating "sides", I stumble across that a lot. And to be frank, it seems a bit childish. In these groupings that turns in to trenches (like some kind of war is going on) people blame each others and using words like, fanboy. Open your mouth and be prepared to be called a fanboy.

I have met some great people thou, a lot of people have probably laught their asses of when im asking stupid things in this forum and other places, but I have always been helped. I don´t care about people screaming their heads of about this or that, but this time I started to read the stuff and it got to me. In the end of the day, I offload my footage, do my best about first light, evaluating my exposures, grade......and so on. After all.....at least for me I got into this with these things in mind and not the other stuff.

 

[Jiri Vrozina]

Mr Gospel Man.
Hahah

 

[Johnny Hurberg]

There ya go

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

Haven't seen the latest parade but I take my hat off to Phil for good will, patience and tact.

 

[L. Langer]

Aren't Jinni Mag contradicting themselves? They say the Mini Mags cost X amount of money to make but they are still making a huge mark up?

The business idea behind the Jinni group of companies seems to be "We'll give you more for your money than the other guy does!". Spec-wise, you can't really argue with that logic, since Jinni offerings are "What people want!". People are always happy to pay less money for something so long as it's less money than what they would normally pay and feels like more of a value, especially if they physically get "more". Hence, why the guy behind the name was planning a wide array of (relatively) inexpensive Jinni-branded products - likely made in Asia - for the owner-operator market that couldn't afford or didn't want to pay for the "name brand" options and sales would have taken off with the wide arrival of Kinefinity and Z-Cam products. Imagine spending $5000 instead of $10000 for the accessories you want to have with your new camera. Sounds great, eh? The Jinnimag was clearly supposed to be the capital generator that kick-started the rest of the business and that's obviously gone by the wayside with the lawsuits draining the Jinni coffer, so I don't think we'll see anything new from Jinni for a while, if ever again.

 

[Donald MJ Anderson]

The business idea behind the Jinni group of companies seems to be "We'll give you more for your money than the other guy does!". Spec-wise, you can't really argue with that logic, since Jinni offerings are "What people want!". People are always happy to pay less money for something so long as it's less money than what they would normally pay and feels like more of a value, especially if they physically get "more". Hence, why the guy behind the name was planning a wide array of (relatively) inexpensive Jinni-branded products - likely made in Asia - for the owner-operator market that couldn't afford or didn't want to pay for the "name brand" options and sales would have taken off with the wide arrival of Kinefinity and Z-Cam products. Imagine spending $5000 instead of $10000 for the accessories you want to have with your new camera. Sounds great, eh? The Jinnimag was clearly supposed to be the capital generator that kick-started the rest of the business and that's obviously gone by the wayside with the lawsuits draining the Jinni coffer, so I don't think we'll see anything new from Jinni for a while, if ever again.

Jinni is upfront about the actual costs and he is showing a DIY route.

Jinni also explains his legal costs are high, which is believable unlike REDs exaggerated words about whats in a Redmag.

 

[John Marchant]

Jinni is upfront about the actual costs and he is showing a DIY route.

He's not actually showing a DIY route though, he's teasing it but leaving key details out for some reason.

 

[Marc D]

Would rather the post instead of the thread be removed

Would rather the post instead of the thread be removed

I see the points made for removing and keeping the thread. I would rather the post that crossed the line be removed instead of the entire thread. It is a thread many of us are interested in and while personal attacks should not take place, it's unfortunate the rest of the content that did not cross the line was also removed.

 

[jake blackstone]

He's not actually showing a DIY route though, he's teasing it but leaving key details out for some reason.

It seems, he's trying to show what Red has done with the red mags design, while at the same time not quite giving a step-by-step recipe for DYI route. If he would disclosed the DYI, then why anyone would need to buy a drive from him?

 

[DJ Meyer]

It seems, he's trying to show what Red has done with the red mags design, while at the same time not quite giving a step-by-step recipe for DYI route. If he would disclosed the DYI, then why anyone would need to buy a drive from him?

Could also just still be waiting for replies to his various forum posts across the internet soliciting help from people who know what they are doing. I imagine crafting all those pseudonyms and pretenses takes time.