HD For Indies

UPDATED SINCE FIRST POSTED -I've added a large body of conjecture about Red's impact on the rental market and other issues to this towards the top

Here's a roundup of interesting tidbits going on in Red One World:

First off, a pic of Frankie as he's been used of late - man, if that's the cover they can whip out for a prototype, what'll the final be? This DEFINITELY looks like some kind of Lay-Zorr BFG 9000...gotta get me one of those...have fun getting this proto on an airplane though...

After briefly re-opening reservations for a few days in January, there are now about 1500 reserved Red One cameras. Comparing that to about "about 100 Vipers, 70 Genesis, and maybe a couple of dozen Dalsa Origin and Arri D20s currently out there" (according to the Digital Cinema Society Newsletter), that makes for a very interesting market out there once all those Red Ones ship. After making some inquiries, informed estimates put Varicam count around 1500ish, and F900 count around 2000ish (these are hard numbers to come by, anybody got a better guess let me know). With Red pre-orders already getting into those volumes before even a working camera has been shown to the public, what will Red One do to the rental market I wonder?

Certainly push down some prices, but how much? I'd spoken to a rental house about their intended Red One rental pricing (Varicam to F900 territory), but will that be sustainable with 1500+ cameras on the market, probably in the first year? Supply and demand will kick in I'd imagine, and between rental houses getting in, and owner/operators that have struggled to afford Red Ones getting in on the rental market on down days, the rental price of Red Ones will come down QUICKLY I'll bet. The points of differentiation will get down to accessories, support, redundant stock, service, knowledge, etc. This does make me think twice about how to optimally position my own Red One I intend to rent out - how can I differentiate? One way will be my plan to have local 35mm film lenses, tripods, matte box, follow focus etc. ready and available, and target higher end clients with a stronger level of support and service (and ancillary services, to be revaled at a later date) that will set me apart from the typical owner/operator who rents theirs out on the side.

But if I were a rental house that just bought heavy into Varicams, F900s, F950s, Vipers, etc., I'd be concerned about the amortization rate of those cameras, and paying close attention to market conditions over the next year plus. As a consumer/renter of any of these goods, this can only be good news, however.

I've talked in the past about Red being a disruptive technology, but as we get closer to actually seeing and receiving working cameras, IF they work as advertised, IF they are field reliable, IF the market accepts them as viable replacements, it is going to change the game for a lot of rental houses pretty soon. Perhaps even as early as later this year - if all the above conditionals turn out favorably (and I think it likely they will), I could see this having an starting to have an effect as early as this calendar year - after the cameras get out into the market, and the initial supply constraint eases, if the market learns about them as an option and accepts them...why would you want to rent an Varicam instead of a Red? Concerns over not knowing how to use the different workflow will probably be one of the largest hindrances at first - "Sounds great, never worked with it, I already know and trust Varicam as good enough for this project, and don't understand this new stuff, where's my tape at the end of the day, why's it so cheap/must not be good, etc." will probably be the biggest impediments to Red's success after they are out in the field, assuming it all works as expected. It'll be up to Red to educate the market as to the benefits.

BUT....then I realize I'm am soooooo the early adopter. Somebody in the comments said it'd take a couple of years for F900s to be affected substantially....and yeah, people are slow to change, no matter how much better any new entrant is. People fear change and like what they know. New camera, new company, new workflow? It'll take some time.

But if Red does what they say it will, within 2 years of it being on the market...what would rental price of Varicams and F900s be? What of the Sony's F23, likely to be priced at around $180-$200K with recorder and due to ship in the next few months, but with anticipated specifications below Red One's in most categories, and at roughly an order of magnitude higher price for camera body and recording capability?

Will it/might it be akin to what's happened in the post hardware/software market, where lowering costs have created a two tier system -buy & fly largely on your own lower cost systems, and high cost, high service systems? This market discontinuity exists/existed somewhat already for cameras - until recently, there was a big gap between HDV ($2-$10K) and pro 2/3" DVCPRO HD (used to start north of $40K) cameras. the gap has been filling in with new DVCPRO HD cameras and XDCAM HD of late. The difference is, Red One is a higher end camera that isn't quite so point and shoot simple - there are options to be dealt with. Good options to have, but more complex choices to be made (wrong or right). And that implies more service/support.

In other markets, I've seen Boxx Systems, a PC integrator, drop out of the high end video editing market because they couldn't sustain their pricing/business model there - the relatively fire-and-forget markets with aftermarket training for turnkey solutions on relatively generic boxes was eating their lunch. Think about other markets where the cost of the tech has dropped drastically, and what it has done to those industries. I had an interesting conversation with a software developer friend of mine - he said there are two markets for enterprise software - below $20K and over $80K. Below $20K, it is expected an IT guy will peruse the options, make a few phone calls to sales & sales engineers, and buy a solution. If you want someone to fly out to your shop on a few days' notice, sit down with you, go over your specs,figure out integration, install a demo unit, etc., you're into $80K+ territory right there. The capabilities of the toolsets may be extremely similar, but the price required to sustain a high level sales force push the costs up there. I don't know what the internal margins are for the Red One, but it will be very interesting to see how they plan to distribute the camera over time, and how they will service and support it. R&D and tooling costs amortize nicely as volume goes up, support distinctly does not. NAB should be very, very interesting for a variety of reasons beyond just specs, prices, products, etc.

I had an interesting conversation with somebody at the Red party about what Red's support plans were - the other guy was saying (this before reservations re-opened and another 400+ orders came in) - "If they are going to sell 1000 cameras in their first few months, they are probalby going to have to field 50,000 questions." That may or may not be an exageration, but you certainly get the point. With so much that is so new and so different about the camera, support infrastructure will be vital. I'm not doubting they won't support it and do so well, just come NAB time, it'd be good to hear some reassuring answers about their plans. How they can do it at the camera's price point will be interesting to see, and see if they can sustain (either high quality support, price point, or both). Their openness, involvement, and responsiveness in online forums bodes well, however.

This is all first draft, top-of-my-head conjecture and mental doodling at this point, fun to think about but too early to base any serious plans on. Comment away as you see flaws in my arguments, and I'll amend this article.

Here's some interesting discussions that have been going on over at Reduser.net, which is now the all-but-stated official place to get info on what's up with Red - the team answers (many) questions asked, but the wheat-to-chaff ratio can be frustratingly low due to the high level of chatter. Here's some of the better stuff:

B4 Mount - Page 2 - Reduser.net - discussion of the B4 mount and how it'll work with the Red sensor. There's a nice demo pic on page 2 (link above) that shows where the 2K frame falls within the total sensor with a B4 lens - so the vignetting occurs well outside the 2K frame - all this bodes well for using Red with B4 lenses.

A-Data's 128GB Solid State Drive Sees the Light of Day - Gizmodo - oh - HELLO - something like this for the Red Flash, please?


Studio Daily | Holographic Storage Coming for HD Post - now we're talkin' - So what if you had the ability to record seven hours of HD video onto a single disc at 160 Mbps? - that's 20 MB/sec, on a 300GB optical disc. And those discs can live in a jukebox that holds dozens of discs - it is being built. Keep in mind that Redcode RAW at 4K @ 24p is about 28 MB/sec. So then think about archiving compressed 4K at nearly realtime, fitting nearly 3 hours of 4K data on a single optical disc.

Suddenly all those complaints about "Where will I store my media?" start to sound whiny...

Pull List / Conform / Batch Scale/Crop - Reduser.net - spot-on discussion of vital post workflow issue

Colour Management - Reduser.net - interesting discussion of how color space issues are handled behind the scenes...and good answers from Graeme.

Reduser.net - View Single Post - Red One Pipeline Diagram v1.0 - thougths on how it'll all work together

Video Assist on Set - Reduser.net - goes into details of on set workflow stuff, quite useful/interesting

Moire Issues - Reduser.net

Overcranking at 4K? any news? - Reduser.net

delivery schedule - Reduser.net

Backing up data "on the road"... - Page 2 - Reduser.net - I chime in with some thoughts as well on data backup on the road - a tough challenge if generating hundreds of gigs a day

BTW - I keep adding onto the bottom of my Steve Jobs' 'Thoughts on Music' piece, scroll down and look for UPDATE if you read the original.

-mike

PS - one more update on Sunday, Feb 11th -

Frankie in action... - Reduser.net - the Red test platform, Frankie, in action, with the Red 300mm lens. Ted looks either surprised or sick, James (operating) looks non-plussed, and Jarred gives his Thousand Yard Stare. This is undoubtedly recent - so if they're still testing/using Frankie in the field (this at a drag strip, undoubtedly covering Oakley's drag racing team), where's Spike, the all-in-one, more-like-shipping-version prototype? I see a big pfhat bundle of cables leading down away from Frankie, so clearly it isn't an all-in-one package. Then again, look how tank-like Frankie is with that casing. Maybe they don't want Spike out there in case anything goes wrong and they have to get out of the way.

-mike

Labels: original, Red