HD For Indies

Big messy Red update:

It is late (1:40am), I'm workin' on a bunch of stuff, and don't have time to pretty this up the way I'd like to. Maybe I'll have time in the morning. But here's everything interesting going on at Red of late I've found.

Biggest news:
-cameras shipping today!
-Red Alert appears to be a cut down version of Redcine (since that isn't ready quite yet)
-there's a node required for QuickTime to work right with Red .r3d files
-specs have been tweaked, perhaps to satisfy legal requirements, but more features than posted below are sure to follow
-CF module is bee's knees according to Jim, everybody will want
-not all features enabled at first, as they've already said, we'll have to see what happens tomorrow.
-ProRes can be used usefully on Red footage, and I go off on "amateur 4K filmmakers" as missing the point
-Red will have big screen presentations at IBC, should be very interesting to see
-there is a 2K ProRes (Mac only) version of Crossing The Line that has been posted for download...but I don't have the link handy.

So in no particular order (until I can spend more time on it), here's what's been up with Red of late on the de facto find-all site for Red, Reduser.net:

UPDATE FRIDAY MORNING:

Jim's put up a few new posts:

1st 25... - Reduser.net: "1st 25... Just so you know, I am here at 1:09am with the RED team personally reviewing each camera of the 1st 25. We are calibrating each camera and my job is to check the files in RED Alert! that Jarred is shooting. We are shooting ISO 320, 1000 and 2000. There are about 20 people here getting ready for tomorrow. It really is a memorable night. About a year and a half ago this was just a dream. Tonight the dream has become a reality. I want to thank all those that believed in RED from the beginning. Jim"

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Some new changes... - Reduser.net: "Some new changes... In keeping with our philosophy (get used to it)... several things have changed. Weight of the camera body is now an even 10 pounds. After changes to the sensor board cooling system (different than we had 2 weeks ago), and beefing up the body to go head to head with a Sherman tank... the body has bulked up. No steroids used, however. This is now one tight bomb. As we have stated, about a hundred times, all features will not be enabled. This has now become our plan. We figure that no matter how high the anticipation, the extreme excitement can wear off after a bit of time. We have a fix for that. Just about the time you get used to the camera, Santa will drop by your email address and leave a package that makes your camera 'new again'. We will continue this plan to keep you plenty excited for a much longer period of time. And when you are fully capable to use all you have, we will surprise you. We have discontinued the Premium Production Pack rail system due to lack of interest and/or everyone wanting to substitute parts. The only system you can buy is the Base Production Pack, then add parts and pieces as you need them. The price of the Base Package has not changed, although it is severly under-priced. We will honor our commitment. More news to follow. Jim"

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ISO news... - Reduser.net: "ISO news... We cannot determine if the 'correct' ISO is 320 or 500. There is a tad less noise at 320, but 500 looks incredible. Actually, we are getting very good results at ISO 1000 and think that it is a very useable rating for the camera. Whether or not you choose 320 or 500 as the 'rated' ISO completely depends on the subject matter. The higher the range of the subject matter, the more you would lean towards 500. But if you have a normal scene and want the very best image, 320 is the number (and default). Jim"

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and for fun, First Soderbergh & Red picture! - Reduser.net


END UPDATE
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What we CAN do...NEW - Reduser.net: "OK, I spent some time with Graeme today and we do, in fact, have the options I spoke about yesterday under development. It is premature (sorry for last night) to add them to our CAN do list without proper testing and final development.

The good news is you are looking deep into the interactive development process. The bad news is you are seeing some of the communication issues that should probably be behind closed doors. Oh, well. I still like it better this way.

Here is the list for today:

4K REDCODE RAW @ 1-60 fps to RAW Port
4K REDCODE RAW @ 1-24 fps to Compact Flash or RED Drive

2K REDCODE RAW scaled @ 1-60 fps to Compact Flash or RED Drive (Under development)
2K REDCODE RAW cropped @ 1-100 fps to Compact Flash or RED Drive

Our final decisions of what we will enable still rely on 1080P and 720P as well as success of development. Specs subject to change as always. All features will not be enabled at time of 1st deliveries...
"

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RED / Cameras - tech specs have changed again - for the moment, RGB, 1080p, and 720p recording are off the chart (not listed), and current Redcode RAW (onboard recording) options are:

4K up to 30fps (using a 35mm lens)

2K RAW (2048x1152 if I recall correctly, using a Super16mm lens) at up to 60fps, with NO RAW port support

New is 1270p (2760x1270) RAW (using a Super16mm lens) with NO Redcode RAW onboard support, and RAW port support (to get max frame rate to an as yet undetailed hard drive RAID product)

Gone (for now) is RGB support for 720p and 1080p recording - convert in post seems to be the current answer based on what I know.

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RED WILL BE AT IBC IN AMSTERDAM FROM SEPTEMBER 7TH - 11TH

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White Balance - http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=3998

Patrick, if you use an optical filter, you loose sensitivity as optical filters can only reduce light, never increase it. With electronic white balance you don't loose sensitivity as electronic filters can gain and diminish.

We use a method for white balance similar to how Digital SLR's work, and how their raw conversion software works.

Graeme

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The CF module...

RED ONE customers really need to buy the CF module. It costs $500.

While it is not mandatory to add it, it sure makes life easy. It is the cheapest way to record on RED. It is the lightest recording option. If you are on the road, you'll have the best chance to find an emergency recording solution with CF. I could go on...

One thing that has been asked is why we didn't make this standard equipment. Truth is that we guessed on the price of the RED ONE at NAB 2006. And given the $2500 allowance, there is no more room for "gifts".

That said, if you can afford the camera, you can't afford to not buy the CF option. (is that a double negative?)

Jim

followed up further down with:

Currently, 8GB cards that we will certify are available. We believe that in October we will certify 16GB cards. It seems possible that in Q2 of 2008 32GB cards might become available.

We love Compact Flash. The real alternative is RED Drive with 2.5" flash drives. But prices won't be competitive until after the 1st of the year.

Jim


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Redcine open source plugins?

Question was asked if there would be open source plugins - Graeme responds "They're not open source" - implying that there are plugins, just not open source. Whether that API is made public or licensed, ever, is not answered there.

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Q&A on the Red LCD, answering that the Red LCD can't be used on other cameras, but does have all kinds of badass functionality, such as focus assist on top of 1:1 mode, waveform, histogram, false color exposure, lookaround, overlays, etc. It probably slices, dices, and juliennes as well.

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IBC Screening Schedule discussed in context of Red User Group meeting

Sept 8th - 17.00 - 18.00
Red Digital Cinema: The technology, workflow and visual power behind the revolutionary RED ONE 4k Digital Cinema Camera

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New Red Delivery Schedule:

New delivery schedule...

Serial numbers 1-25 will be delivered August 31st (next Friday).

Serial numbers 26-50 will be delivered Sept, 7th (following Friday).

There will be a slight delay due to IBC for the next batch of deliveries.

We'll keep you posted.

Jim

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Ted in fxguidetv - look at episode 13

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unofficial red usergroup meeting - 9 pages of discussion, am offline so can't check latest status

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follow up on this thread - http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=3883

did revised specs ever get published?

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Features NOT enabled:

We have said for months that all features would NOT be enabled for the 1st cameras going out the door.

I would give you a complete list, but we continue to enable features as we prepare for this coming Friday.

We expect that all features will be done by early October. That means that if you get a camera before that date, you will receive a "present" every week that enables features as they become available.

You would open your email (or download from our website) a file that you transfer to a Compact Flash card. Insert the card and boot the camera. You will be asked if you want to "Upgrade your Firmware". You click "Yes". A minute later, you'll get a message that the update is complete. Reboot. Done.

We have spoken to all reservation holders for the 1st 25 cameras and they understand this. But your number may be coming up soon after so you should know.

You do have the option to wait until all features are enabled to take delivery at no consequence to you (if you have that much patience). We will hold your camera (same serial number) and ship when feature set is complete. So far, none of the 25 has chosen that option. But you can.

We won't know exactly how many features will be in or out of the 1st 25 until Thursday night. We will be testing and deciding until the last minute. Since things change everyday, what we say today will not mean much. I'm sure you will all hear about what is "in" and what is "coming" by Friday night.

Jim
"We are too dumb to know what not to do."


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Red in Austin rumors

Rumors that Rodriguez was involved with a Red. Dunno, but that would certainly make sense - I've (yeah me Mike) talked to RR on 3 occassions about the Red over the last year or so, and he was interested in it.

But Jarred dismisses as rumor.

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Questions about Final Cut and Redcode (unanswered in the thread as of this writing) - person asks if the next FCP release will include Redcode - depends on what you call "next" - 6.0.2, or 7.0. 6.0.2 - I'd guess almost certainly not - Red will distribute Redcode codecs at first, and, in time, I'd expect it to get wrapped into a full-on Final Cut supported update. But that'll take some time. In the meantime, we'll have to see what RedQuick does, and as an unsupported QT codec, there won't be any RT performance to speak of. This I know because I've been doing a lot of FCP testing of late, and if you aren't in one of the "blessed" formats, realtime cross dissolves, color correction, etc. aren't going to happen.

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Similar question on Redcode and Avid - for now, for both, the most productive likely workflow is going to be use Redcine to transcode to codec of choice (be it online or offline). For FCP, that'll be whatever you want to use for offline, and ProRes or Uncompressed if planning on finishing in Final Cut. For Avid, the DNxHD family (36 for HD offline, 145 or better yet 220 for online), or of course uncompressed if your hardware can handle it (that applies to FCP as well).

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Michael Morlan's Overview Diagram" - a nicely organized graphic that shows off the various connections and production workflows possible with the Red One for all of the connectors etc.

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High speed CF reader for offloading footage

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RED / Cameras - we finally have dimensions - 6.34 inches tall, 12.02 inches long, 5.20 inches wide.

Acquisition formats - 2540p (via RAW port), 4K, 1270p (via RAW port), 2K, deliverying 4K RGB, 2K RGB, 1080p in RGB or 4:2:2, 720p in RGB or 4:2:2

23.98, 24, 25 fps @ 4K/ 50, 59.94 for 2K (windowed sensor) for now

HD-SDI and HDMI are 720p (I thought HD-SDI could do 1080, guess not)

weight around 9 lbs (no battery, lens, or viewfinder)

aluminum alloy construction

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Is Redcine available this Friday? - somebody says Jim said yes, but I'd like a confirm on that

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About Genesis HD - Reduser.net - interesting thread accurately describing how the Genesis imager builds its HD (color striped, 2 sets of R/G/B pixels, one ND filtered for highlights, other for the rest of the range). David Mullen (apologies to both he and David Stump whom I originally attributed, I keep mixing up these two sharp DPs in my head) chimes in with his usually concise and accurate observations, and Graeme pitches for the Red team. I just saw Superbad the other night (shot on Genesis) and while I wasn't looking for it, it didn't even occur to me that it was shot on digital instead of film. What I saw was this thing called "a movie" that made me laugh a lot at d*ck jokes.

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GPU for RedCode and Redcine - Reduser.net - concensus seems to be for the ATI X1900 for the moment, but nobody's testing (and discussing publicly) yet.

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Dci Output - Reduser.net - Mark from OffHollywood Pictures points out that the latest version of Scratch (3.5) will output 16 bit TIFF sequences in the XYZ color space per the DCI spec. Keep in mind, however, that is but one ingredient - think of that as the MPEG-2 for you DVD - you need lots of wrapping paper and stuff around it before it is a present to give to somebody...

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What is the current ProRes 422 Workflow? - Reduser.net - somebody asked how ProRes is going to work with Redcode, and then somebody asked why use ProRes if Redcode is higher res and same datarate, and Mike Most nails it, then later on I go off, at length, on why 4K finish is a fool's destination if you don't have a place to watch it in 4K lined up and ready to go. Proper 4K post is hard and time consuming. Why do it if you don't need it. Anyway, since I wrote it I feel OK re-posting it here:

Mike Most nails the quality issues - and I've been (OK, spent 3 days then had my interns start doing it) doing FCP testing for WEEKS to quantify realtime performance stuff.

And the big issue is performance - want a cross dissolve? Want to use the 3way color corrector? Want to add titles? Want to do it all at the same time?

You need realtime performance. And if your box is fast enough, you can do it in real time, at high quality, with no waiting to render. If you don't, progress bar city. Go get some coffee.

Glenn - awwww! Its always nice to be quoted.

: )

And, as I keep saying to those who want to master RGB 4:4:4 at 12 or 16 bits - WHERE EXACTLY ARE YOU GOING TO PLAY THAT!?!?!?!?

On some thread on here I saw somebody talking about amateur 4K moviemaking.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING.

There is definitely amateur 4K shooting with Red (OK, relatively well financed amateurs in comparison to a lot of the indie folks who email me looking for advice).

You can even finish in 4K (but not in Final Cut) with desktop tools.

But unless you have an $80-100K projector lying around, and the infrastructure to drive it, YOU'RE NOT NOT NOT going to be watching your movie in 4K.

I think it'll be very interesting to see the wise indies shoot 4K Redcode, offline in whatever (or MAYBE ProResHQ if they have a fast enough box and the storage space), run it through Color, make a nice 4:2:2 festival master (SXSW and Sundance both wanted 1080i60 HDCAM tapes this year). That'll get you a nice looking festival master. If you can afford a professional colorist on a DaVinci or Quantel or whatever, fantastic - do that - but high quality 4:2:2 is good enough for festival screenings.

THEN, if you get picked up for theatrical distribution, THEN worry about conforming 2K or 4K and sending to a high end post house yadda yadda.

Otherwise, go make a nice 24p master to whatever specs the distrib wants and go from there...

But for those worrying about 4:4:4, or 4K, for less than theatrical distribution, I say you're worrying too much - you can make a much better looking file than you can reasonable watch or distribute.

Final Cut Pro, even 6.0.1, can't properly process RGB 4:4:4 beyond 8 bits. Surprise! It can play it back, but if you want a cross dissolve, or add a title, you're out of luck. The Apple folks managed to say with a straight face that you should process your cross dissolves in Shake. Titles too. (Hey, at least we can reposition in Color now though, but it has its own issues to address when dealing with high quality frames, but that is another thread/site/article).

And of course, you can't do 4K in FCP now - 2048x1556 AFAIK is the biggest supported frame that'll play out to a color accurate display in real time if you have a Kona3.

The flip side, the advantage, is that you if you NEED a high quality deliverable, you'll have it, at a lower cost than has been the case in the past.

There's a BUNCH of other issues and details and caveats to what I've said here (Mike Most might want to chime in here, or not), but that's the gist of it from where I stand, until we see what Red has up its sleeve with the 4K displays and projectors they mentioned at NAB 2007 come to fruition.

At which point, we can all go back and re-render to 4K if we want to.

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Reduser.net - View Single Post - Packaging? - simple box with a Red sticker on it. Easy enough.

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2k equipment- kona or blackmagic - Reduser.net Discussion of AJA vs BMD for Red usage. Bluefish even gets a mention, and I ask why. Consensus - Kona3 for now.

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First Soderbergh & Red picture! - Reduser.net

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RED Alert! - Reduser.net: "Since REDCINE is being rebuilt and won't release for a week or two, RED Alert! will be the mini-app of choice. At some point we will post it with sample footage. Be advised that it is a Mac app only (REDCINE will be both Mac and PC). You will need RED Alert! and the REDCODE node (you will put the REDCODE node in HD/Library/Quicktime folder). This mini-application will open .r3d files (REDCODE RAW), allow you to view the file, select DI mode or Standard mode, and output to Quicktime wrapped files in 2k, 1k, and .5k for ingest into FCP or viewing in QT. You can also output to DPX 2k, DPX 4k, 4k TIFF, 2k TIFF, in Linear, REC 709, or Log. You can make some corrections prior to output. We will help you choose settings depending on what you are trying to accomplish. More to come... Jim"

So what is DI vs. standard mode? How soon is soon? Scroll down the above page for a screen grab.



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more flotsam:

eSATA to RAID until RedDrive ships? - Reduser.net


Some good 1080P news... - Reduser.net


http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=3908

Motu V3HD - Reduser.net

Redcine Processing Times - Reduser.net

Rendering Fisheye to Rectilinear? - Reduser.net

Is the RedCode codec available this Friday? - Reduser.net

Ted Schilowitz in fxguidetv - Reduser.net

How much is an operational Red camera cost? - Reduser.net

1270P raw - Reduser.net

Dci Output - Reduser.net

Cineform 4K solution? - Reduser.net

Features NOT enabled... - Reduser.net

Red in the news: NZ - Reduser.net

10 Bit log gone? - Reduser.net

There. That ought to hold you until we can learn more....

-mike

Labels: Red