Why not Modular Features for a Modular Camera?

[Deanan]

No thanks buddy.

personally, I feel like I'm still waiting for a non-beta piece of red software. Its all very hit and miss from my POV.

I'm not in a production company so bought a 3ghz dual core/4gig/ati 256 gfx machine to D.I.T/test R3D files with.. but its not powerful enough to do the job with Redsoft.

In fact, Red software doesn't run on my ATI based imac at all, unless you run bootcamp.

I have 4gig of ram, but the problem is RCX doesn't have a CPU based/debayer fallback it seems, relying exclusively on GPU/GFX ram, so it only uses 300mb-ish and complains there's not enough graphics memory to display full-res previews.

Is GPU acceleration worth the price of software that lets users down? not if your system bottleneck is disk I/O.. phoooey.. bad by design.

All I want is a GUI to tweek meta-data and stream images to disk reliably..

I'm not ready to pay for software upgrades, ever, as a point of principle, unless the hardware gets upgraded. Anything else is rubbish, and crippleware is sh1t!! ..thankfully its something red isn't guilty of so far.. oh, unless you include media firmware etc.. bollocks, forgot that.. but thats different..

Does Epic support lense data? ..the R1 doesn't AFAIK ..Lets get everything working already before we branch off into the world of price establishing crippleware bullcrap..

ps, does anyone know if the latest Red Alert supports the latest colour science.. I need to debayer some R3D files into Apple codecs without replacing a new machine?

God help the soccermoms..

RCX only uses the graphics card to display the image and in stereo mode to create the stereo views. It does require opengl 2.1 at minumum (which was released in 2006) and enough memory to store 4 frames. If you can't see full res in the viewer, you can still render as the rendering doesn't happen on the graphics card.

The reason why you can't see full res about 4k is that older ATI cards don't support textures above 4k. This table shows the limits:
http://developer.apple.com/graphicsimaging/opengl/capabilities/
under "Max Texture Size".

Which crippleware are you talking about? We put a tremendous amount of resources into free software and firmware updates.

 

[Matt Fleming]

Does Epic support lense data? ..the R1 doesn't AFAIK ...

Just FYI: RED ONE (with lenses that have /i pins) does feed lens metadata to the R3D files. As of BUild 20 (if I remember correctly), R3D files can record and retain lens metadata. Since the PL mount on the EPIC has /i tech pins, it appears as though EPIC will be capable of doing the same.

However, RED is not making the lens metadata accesible, so no, even though all the hardware and software is in place, there is no current support for lens metadata apart from seeing it on your camera monitor.

 

[Andrew Gentle]

Software does not cost nothing. It costs alot to develop and support even if there is little or no hardware cost

From RED's perspective, you would have to spend the money and time creating the firmware for the fully featured camera and then spend additional time and money crippling it to put into the lower priced cameras. Hardware costs remain constant. In that way, it would actually cost more on RED's part to make the cameras like this.

 

[Rajesh Puttaswamaiah]

It would make the rental market rather Chaotic...

I have an Epic s
Me 2

But the cameras wouldn't be the same, the productions woukldn't get what they expected and it would lead to a lot of badmouthing.

The simplicity of the R1 program was that except for external kit, all the bodies had the same capacity.

I can sympatise with the idea, but don't think it generally would be a very smart move...

I did not think about the rental market, and agree with your point. More versions of the brain seems a better option.

I see where you are coming from ...from a financial standpoint.

You want the base model..and would like to buy features packed as modules as you go.

Unfortunately, there are things that can be separated and certain things that just have to come together.

For example, I would think that frame rates have to be associated with the sensor and electronics that go with it into the brain. You are asking to basically make the "brain" into further separate parts. Separating the functions of the brain into more different parts, even if possible, will increase the price. It's cheaper to build something all together in one unit.

It costs more to do the lego building block concept that Red, through their genius, have implemented.

Red comes in at a certain admission price. You get what you pay for, but with Red, I think you get ALOT for what you pay for when you compare it with other cameras.

Yes Toneci Tran, you are right I was looking from a financial point of view.
Infact I got this idea after reading the frame rate difference between Epic-M and Epic-S. I beleive the sensors are the same, but do not know much about the difference in electronics. Thanks for the clarifications.

I am not questioning what RED has achieved and the price point it is offering the cameras at. I completely agree with all of you that what we get from Red for the price is no where comparable to the competition. There is no comparision btw EPIC-M @ 5K which cost $12-14K to that of a Sony HD Camera which costs $100K+. It's only because of RED people like me are able to dream of owning such revolutionary cameras.

RED's modularity itself is revolutionary and "Out of the box" thinking. I just took the same idea a bit too far to understand what other challenges/limitations it poses.