Wish List: Single Hand Op, Metadata Lables, Cf

[DaveT]

I would buy the Scarlet right now if it was available, but as it’s a year off, and the Red guys seem to be interested in users experiences, I’ve got a few more ideas to throw at the group.


Ability to operate the camera with one hand.
Even if it’s just turn on, start/stop shooting, and zoom.
I know it’s going to be hard on the mechanism, but it if we could ‘flick’ the camera, and the viewfinder would rotate and snap open. Or have the viewfinder spring open when a catch is released?


Input labels into footage metadata.
For instance, ‘### boat harbour #gps# #date#’
The labelling system could include updating fields such as ### which is a number that increments until a new label is specified, and 'date' being the current date inserted.
I’ve been to festivals where I’ve shot some band footage and I’ve had to note the name of the band somewhere (usually on the program or the back of my hand.) It would have been nice to have a label attached to the clip in camera.
It might be useful to be able to input a ‘shot list’ and be able to scroll through and assign the labels while shooting.
For example, a researcher the night before could input ‘Opera house’ ‘harbour long shot morning’ ‘disembarking passengers’ ‘harbour long shot evening’ and the camera operator would shoot footage to match the labels.
Really pushing the concept could be a ‘send to Red’ option added to my Nokia N95 (or any Symbion phone that supports Wifi) that appears in the ‘send to’ menu.
This would allow me to write a note, send it to the camera, and have the note attached to the clip.
That said, I could write a note that is saved in the phone, attached to the metadata, and sent off via SMS/email (don’t ask me why, I’m brainstorming! Something like ‘Loch Ness monster captured at end of fishing trip.’)

Have you guys all seen this Adobe video on (among other things,) metadata usage?
http://blogs.adobe.com/genesisproject/2008/04/adobe_technology_preview_on_ad.html


I really like the dual CF card ports.
I like that there aren’t fiddley little doors covering the ports and cards.
I like that I can obtain this memory in most outlets all over the planet.
Is it possible to get SD/CF adaptors to broaden my memory card options?

 

[Johan Malmsten]

these sound like good ideas... especially as opposed to the usual lens-discussions.

my addition

Some kind of "Red-Console"
Being that WiFi things are mentioned I would really see a place for some kind of Total Scarlet Remote-Controll built as software for PC & Mac that communicates with the Scarlet Cam. I think of this mainly since I have been reading about the Canon Console for their top prosumer cams where they can build settings-profiles for all aspects of shooting and monitor waveforms and other stuff coming out of the cameras. This framework should be able to run with both Scarlet and Epic and possibly even the One...

Also, as I have mentioned before this would open up for less obvious forms of camera controlling gear, using DirectX Input architecture on PC's and whatever the equivalent on Mac is. Using flight-sticks or gamepads to controll zoom/focus and such might seem odd, but at least for me the thought is intriguing especially when mounting the camera on rigs where you cannot use the on board controlls.

I too like the CF card ports...
but... some way of covering them would be appreciated since people will be taking this camera out into places they wouldn't dare take their Ones... Dust, rain and such is never good for data-ports as far as I know. Maybe just a sturdy strap-on cover would do just fine and still be durable. And if it's strap-on, we can always get a new one if they do get shredded in the latest crash while protecting the CF-cards. (as several have noted and Jim has already expressed a humorous wish that this cam will be the ultimate "crash-cam")

 

[Christoffer Glans]

- A Red controller with an LCD display for the focus puller (for use when mounted on a steadycam. WiFi should enable that yes?
I think that such a controller for zoom and focus is also good for Red One and Epic as well.

- Good timecode

- Phantompower to external mic (mini - XLR?) (At least one input, prefering two)

- Red Remote Audio (for using mic to far away from the camera and mobility when using dollys and steadycams)

Although not all of these are about Scarlet but more of accessories for all cameras...

- Red Crane & steadycam...

 

[DaveT]

Port cap.
While the discussion on lens was informative, it was starting to get on my tits.
I don’t think Mr Jannard was the only one wishing folks would just go and buy a Red One.
There is a good reason why people buy compact 35mm camera’s. Mainly that they don’t want to be lugging gear all over the country side. I thought the comment about not needing to clean the chip was a good one too.


I agree with respect to dust intrusion into the CF and battery compartments. It’s not like users will be provided with a strip of Red branded gaff to tape across the ports.

I reckon a solution could be to take some inspiration from the lens cap.
I’m guessing that the Scarlet will have a lens cap?
Why not have a similar cap at the other end?
Tethered to the device just like the one up at the business end?
It could attach with the same sort of ‘pinch’ clasps that a lens cap uses (yellow in the illustration.)
The cap would be cheap to make and to replace if it gets lost or broken.
It could be made of a transparent plastic if there are indicator lights on the back panel, and for the user to check what cards are loaded.

There could be alternate caps with ‘cut-outs’ such as ones that expose the USB plugs for when the camera is used with an external power source or storage device.

As this is a cap, it could be secured using tape if the user really needs to insure it stays on for an extended period of time.
There could be a way to attach the lens cap to the port cap to stop the two from swinging about.

If there was a waterproof case available, that might dispense with the cap all together.



Input labels into footage metadata UPDATED.
For instance, ‘### boat harbour #gps# #date#’
The labelling system could include updating fields such as ### which is a number that increments with each press of the start/stop recording button, until a new label is specified.

‘Date’ being the current date inserted.

‘GPS’ so that an exact position that the footage was taken can be tracked, or returned to (Great for locale scouting.)

 

[Johan Malmsten]

I've been thinking about this one for a while...
Option for old-school trigger-rec-button
I mean... as opposed to normal rec-button where you press it and release and it goes on recording until you press it a second time I would like to see a feature to have it work more like a 8mm camera. Meaning, that I would have to keep the button pressed during filming and my recording stopping when the rec button is let go.

Why you might ask? because of the old phenomena of getting out of sync with the state of recording... Everyone has had their moments of being in the midst of the moment, getting up the camera and start shooting bits and pieces, only to get home and realize that the camera was recording when the event started and all you recorded was the bits in between swooshing around with your camera trying to get to a good location and then it jumps ahead to the next period of swooshing transport.

The reason I bring it up as "old school 8mm" is that for many people, watching your neighbors vacation footage often went from a fun 10 minute watch of nice tid-bits to 4 hours of shaking and walking around-footage. Mainly because of two reasons.

1) cost per minute of tape is vaaastly cheaper than film, making recordists less selective of subject-matter to commit on tape/film

2) a more unexplored reason I might add, is the thing that every 8mm camera I have encountered has had trigger-style rec-buttons. You had to keep it down to make it film. This would be an extension of 1 since it was expensive to film on film and every shot had to count much more than today.

And since we cannot, or actually don't want to, change 1 (making medium expensive again), I feel a need for 2. That would at least do away with the old "I forgot the camera was on" and "I thought the camera was off"-thingy wasting space on the CF-card or missing out on great footage. Finger to the button means recording, finger off the button means not recording. People are forgetful bastards and I'm one of them.

Now this is a mode that should, if implemented, be strictly as a software thing. Since there are often occasions where this mode of operation isn't that crucial and sometimes even counter-productive. Filming a concert for example wouldn't be helped by having a dead-mans-switch mandatory to the operator since he might need to let go of the rec-button to use the zoom and focus-rings simultaneously. It would be simple to implement on a software level I think. And I can think of occasions where I would actually like that kind of selectivisation built into the rec-button.

So I'll add it to the wish-list as an odd thing to think about. I would like the option very much. Especially coupled with the metadata-incrementation thing previously mentioned...

 

[DaveT]

Great point.
I wish I could say that I have no idea what you're talking about. But yeah, I sometimes find that I've 'got out of sync' with the state of the camera.
This is a great idea!
Even if it was an option, I reckon I would turn it on most times

A lot of those old cameras had fore finger trigger buttons too, right????
When I was modeling up the cam above, I was playing around with triggers on the front of the case, under the lens.
Trigger on the front and leave the thumb to control zoom and such like.

 

[Garth Philpot]

It might be useful to be able to input a ‘shot list’ and be able to scroll through and assign the labels while shooting.
For example, a researcher the night before could input ‘Opera house’ ‘harbour long shot morning’ ‘disembarking passengers’ ‘harbour long shot evening’ and the camera operator would shoot footage to match the labels.
Really pushing the concept could be a ‘send to Red’ option added to my Nokia N95 (or any Symbion phone that supports Wifi) that appears in the ‘send to’ menu.
This would allow me to write a note, send it to the camera, and have the note attached to the clip.
That said, I could write a note that is saved in the phone, attached to the metadata, and sent off via SMS/email

this is a great idea ... a great utility for the wifi function ...

 

[Mark A. Beal]

Port cap.
I agree with respect to dust intrusion into the CF and battery compartments. It’s not like users will be provided with a strip of Red branded gaff to tape across the ports.

I too agree that some kind of cover is necessary. I suspect the final version will have something similar to an SLR's compartment cover and that the mockups have simply left that off for demonstration purposes.

 

[Johan Malmsten]

Another thought smaller and probably already there:

Keep the ability to select shutterspeeds in degrees as well as #-per-second
I know that "soccer-moms" and the likes are probably more used to the 1/x way of choosing shutterspeed. But it does feel more conveniant to have the ability to shoot with shutter-degree settings. That way, when doing multiple framerates I can leave it at 180 degrees and know that whatever mode of under/overcranking I do it will cut together much more nicely in terms of motion-blur. Also, when choosing another framerate I just have to select the framerate, not framerate AND shutterspeed. Like I said, I'm a forgetfull bastard and this would make it one less thing to forget. I select 25fps I get 1/50, I select 180fps burst and I get 1/360 automatically.

And as all my suggestions, it's a matter of software and should be optionable via menu if implemented. So the "soccer-moms" or TV-crew, not schooled in film-speech, won't have to learn it all over again in the midst of shooting when the new scarlet arrives on set... "But I set the shutter to 50 like I'm told and this scarlet-cam just stutters! This cam is shit!"... or the soccer-mom going "no matter how High I set the shutter-speed,"being used to shooting high shutterspeeds during the sons soccer-match "it just gets more messy, mr Sales Rep. I think it's broken. I want a refund". I don't want to generate these kinds of responses when the camera is released I mean...

I wonder if there's going to be a "soccer-mom" switch built onto the camera? AKA "full auto"

And then I would like to wish(dream) for a:

red-iola
Just like a moviola, but for video, and from red. A standalone machine built for cutting 3K-5K video. Just straight cuts, nothing fanzy shmanzy... no internet-connection, nothing other than the edit-tools needed, no firefox, no safari, no winamp, no minesweeper (that'll be a hard one), no nothing. One maybe two layers of video. Nothing other than straight cuts. no support to do audio-mixing. You assign a 1-to-8-channel soundtrack-file for the clip/nested sequence and that's it for sound. Built in support for full rez realtime playback. Hook it up to a home-cinema-system for dailies and viewing temp-cuts with surround sound.

You want to do anything other than that, like fading between shots or edit/design/mix sounds?... Choose the clip/sequence in question and export it to flash-drive and bring it over to the appropriate workstation. When done with it, bring it back, import it in and exchange the clip you just modified. Comes with 2 full 2K flat-screen monitors and a RAID harddrive-connection-solution. Raid of course being a solution that is easily expandable when larger productions creates the need.

THAT my friends... is my dream-edit-suite. completely standalone, no networking enabled. You feed it with power and footage and soundtracks, and an occasional firmware-update (firmware being the only software running in the whole beast, no regular OS that is). When done, it has everything needed to create a 2-5k dpx-master at full feature lengths. Export to removable harddrive and take it to the film-out lab.

This... for $3 000 dollars delivered to my home... And I keep on dreaming...