Introducing Red Digital Cinema
by Thomas James
on
Apr 2, 2006 at 1:24:39 am
At the website www.red.com is information about the new Red Digital Cinema camera that features 4000 x 2500 resolution or 10 megapixels shot at 60 frames per second.
Re: Introducing Red Digital Cinema by Tim Kolb on Apr 2, 2006 at 3:01:49 am
The company creating the camera has been around a while...I don't think announcements are due to "introduce" it so much as when the company actually can "produce" it.
Then there is the issue of workflow for the 2K+ RAW images...I hope that comes around when the camera does. I know I don't have a dual fiber channel field recorder anywhere handy...HDSDI is fine, but I'm guessing this camera may not be priced competitively to use strictly for 1920x1080 HD...or maybe it will...?? There will be more options as of NAB, so the competition keeps mounting.
The website has remained pretty much like you see it for as long as I can remember...other than the NAB 2006 announcement that there will most likely be an announcement.
So anyway...I know Graeme is involved with the development folks on this thing...best of luck to them, it should be a great camera from reading the two pages that don't say "stay tuned" on the website.
Re: Introducing Red Digital Cinema by Thomas James on Apr 2, 2006 at 3:43:18 am
Olympus also has a high fidelity video camera that uses 4 each of 1920x1080 chips for a total resolution of 3840 x 2160 up to 30 frames per second. I suppose each chip has its own dedicated compression engine and its own dedicated hard drive to record the image. And each hard drive has its own dedicated firewire port and I guess you could use four seperate computers to edit. Of course this could introduce split screen effect if the four chips are not calibrated with respect to each other. In the Olympus system 8 one megapixel XGA projectors are ganged together to display the image with four projectors on the top row and four projectors on the bottom row. The name for this technology is called parallel processing and its a good way of achieving tomorows technology today. Red Digital Cinema is scheduled to deliver by the end of this year at an affordable price point.
Re: Introducing Red Digital Cinema by Blub on Apr 2, 2006 at 5:43:28 pm
Last Fall I posted a note here (you can search for it) regarding a New York Times article about yet another 4K video camera from Sony. The story was mostly about a video game/graphics confab in Southern Calif and the point was more about a live fiber optic feed from the show back to Japan. The fiber optic thing was of more interest to the reporter but they did identify the camera as SONY and the product as a 4K system.
As I remember someone stepped in here to note that they thought that the camera was by some other company other then Sony. The New York Times is a general news paper and might easily have misidentified the camera maker, but, with respect, the story said Sony. And this one was in use as of Oct 2005.
Re: Introducing Red Digital Cinema by Thomas James on Apr 2, 2006 at 6:56:57 pm
I believe the 4 k camera mentioned was a joint venture betweem Sony and Panavision. The Red Digital Cinema is designed to be an affordable camera so that even the wedding videographer could afford it. It may seem that 4k would be overkill for a wedding however the ability to pick out 4 k stills from the video footage would be an added value for the wedding videographer who wants to offer a video and stills package but does not want to hire a seperate photographer. Present 2k high definition video camera really do not offer the resolution required for still photos. Also the Red camera is a modular camera so it can also be upgraded so that the high end professional can also use it.
I don't know... by Bob Bonniol on Apr 3, 2006 at 2:45:37 am
This feels like, what, the 2nd, or maybe 3rd one of the product announcements I've seen this year for digital back 2k/4k cameras... And I haven't really seen many/any in the field at all. It strikes me that even this Red Giant camera prototype (idea) floated around last year around NAB time...
And 4k digital back camera at videographer prices (let's for the sake or agrument put that at the price of an 'average' HDV Prosumer rig: $5500. Even using CMOS to unify the chips, it seems to me that the ramp up expense to produce the imaging chips is crazy expensive for 4k. Thus the price on the Viper. Now you can put a pure digital back on a 4k film camera (Like the ARRI product), but that substitutes the cost of live scan and digitation to driv es, also way, wicked, expensive. If the Red Giant does what they say it does, I would(will) expect to see a $50k + price tag... And that might be for just the digital back components.
I don't know, maybe I'm wrong. As always questions: So they really have it (and I mean production ready, ready to ship, not prototyped) ? What drives the price with the unit ?
Future marches on, and such a thing as you describe WILL EXIST. It's just when. I'm not sure that's now though...
Bob Bonniol
MODE Studios
www.modestudios.com
Contributing Editor, Entertainment Design Magazine
Art of the Edit Forum Leader
Live & Stage Event Forum Leader
HD Forum Leader
Re: I don't know... by Tim Kolb on Apr 3, 2006 at 2:57:55 am
I agree Bob...my answer wasn't as detailed as yours, but the sentiment was identical...
But I can't say that a certain thing won't exist anymore than someone can tell me it will...we'll see. I've heard nothing definitive, but I would think if there was going to be a prototype to see at NAB, we'd have seen an announcement...or maybe it will be a surprise.
...and maybe it will cost $4995.00 USD...I'll take two.
Re: I don't know... by Thomas James on Apr 3, 2006 at 10:56:49 pm
What I like about Jim Jannard is that he believes in quantum leaps in technology and that the evolutionary steps and improvements in technology must be bypassed. He believes that the traditional camera makers have been spoon feeding us minor technological improvements for years so they can protect their high end. Also Jim Jannard is a self made man and he is a billionaire so he is not just talk but a man willing to put money behind his research versus the maverick inventor who has to work out of his garage with no money. And he has a reputation for bucking the system and being sucessfull with his Oakley sunglasses product which was the first scratch resistant non glass prescription lenses. Now I know that flys in the face of the old school that says you have to crawl before you walk and that you have to understand all of the basics and you have to learn your ABC's before you get to the XYZ's and that technological improvement is a slow tedious process.
One thing that Jim Jannard has mentioned is that even though he claims the camera is affordable it will certainly not be cheap and although he has not set a price it seems that $5000 will be out of the question. Even if the camera is over $10,000 the wedding videographer who values the added income and the labor savings of a truly hybrid camera that shoots ultra high definition video while automatically capturing thousands of 10 megapixel still photos at a rate of 60 frames per second making it virtually impossible to miss the shot. It seems to me that a price of 50,000 dollars would be out of range of most wedding videographers and would result in a niche high end market where economies of scale would be impossible to implement.
Re: I don't know... by Tim Kolb on Apr 4, 2006 at 12:06:02 am
All that is fine, but I think that most of us have seen the announcement... We know that someone is working on this camera.
You'll have to pardon us if we don't get too excited about a product that has had a virtually unchanged website for a year or more with a picture that isn't from a camera that nobody can show us...
When it exists in three dimensions, we'll all be interested, I'm quite sure.
Re: I don't know... by Blub on Apr 4, 2006 at 2:00:39 am
I think I figured this one out. About a year ago it dawned on me that still cameras with their fantastic quality sensors can produce an image far bester than any HD camera. As each year passes the frame rate you can shoot is ever increasing, why wont this technology compeat with traditional HD video, it will.
I realized that Sony and Panasonic, along with many other video camera makers were going to see a real competitor coming out of nowhere, when someone puts still camera technology into a 30fps and 24fps video camera.
In other words, while the big video companies are doing their R&D and offering up new cameras a completely new and different technology was starting to encroach on their turf and they didn
Re: I don't know... by Tim Kolb on Apr 4, 2006 at 10:09:08 pm
I don't think any of us are saying this is impossible...
I think there is so much technology coming out that most of us have to keep current with that we can actually lay our hands on...it seems silly to invest a lot of time in discussion of an item that doesn't even seem to exist (for potential customer's eyes anyway) as a cardboard mockup yet...
This camera will enter the field when it is ready...until then...
Re: I don't know... by Thomas James on Apr 5, 2006 at 4:04:35 am
I mean I wouldn't advise anyone to wait for this camera to come out before making a purchase but on the other hand at NAB 2005 the Panasonic HVX200 was just vaporware and all they had was a balsa wood mockup.
Re: I don't know... by Thomas James on Apr 18, 2006 at 1:36:10 am
The problem is that if it cost $120,000 there would not be enough buyers for economies of scale. Remember this is a single chip camera so it apeals to the affordable high definition market. A wedding videographer needs this camera so he can pull stills from the footage so there is added value but he will not pay an arm and leg.
