2009 the year of digitial cinema
Take a guy who has a very successfull sunglass bussiness, some hardware geniouses a friend who is an indy movie producer - shake everything and let sit for 3 years. Whats the outcome? A completely change landscape of digital cinema recording. I am of course talking about the RED cameras. Not only has RED proven they can produce a camera that rivals cameras 10-20 times the price they also threat to overtake every other market that has "pro" in it - pro sumer video, pro-photography. The big camera manufacturers are shocked and pump out their own versions of video capable photocameras (because the video cameras have already lost with their lousy 1/3rd sensors and tape mentality). So the newest competitor on the block? Canon EOS 5D MarkII. Its probably the most best pro photocamera you want to get short before middle format but thats it. While it does not inherit the embarrassing sheering effect of the Nikon Pro Cam (the name I forgot) when you move the camera "too fast" it shares the same problem as all other photocams with video function out there: H.264 only. I understand that most photo camera design teams do not get the fact that people are actally doing something in post with the recordings - emblematic with all the "demo" videos have been "not post processed because the companies want to show you the raw footage" - and while stunning its about as far as this footage gets you because doing ANYTHING - even a slight color correction on H.264 footage - even with an insanely high bitrate - will look like crap - especially if you have to recompress it afterwards for web delivery. H.264 is a time based compressor - and the realtime H.264 is even worse because it allocates the same bitrate across all of the movie - leaving you extremely lacking when it comes to fast motion video. Heck up to 8x8 pixel can be combined to one in the color channel of H.264. That leaves you with a 320x240 color resolution when you shoot in HD. Its a nice gimmick and for news style stuff its probably alright (but I wouldnīt want to design the post pipeline trying to even just edit the stuff - non iFrame codecs just donīt edit well - realtime scrubbing is almost impossible etc).
So Nikon and Canon can just try again this was a miss when it comes to the video capabilities.
Until then everyone is looking at RED on November 13th when they show their revised Scarlet 3k camera that will cost you around the same price as the canon photo cam (thats around 2.500 lines x around 4500 rows - thats "only" 11 Megapixels - VIDEO and RAW and iFrame) and brings better photo functionality on top of the exceptional post friendly video functionality.
Oh and if you run a company that makes consumer goods - this is how you should run it:
With 11 days to go, I want to take a moment to thank all of you. We have listened. At 1st, it was difficult. We kept saying to ourselves "don't these guys know how difficult this stuff is?"... and "if they want that, they should try and build one themselves!". Then we really began to get comfortable with the tiger we had grabbed hold of. And many of the suggestions actually seemed within reach. So we decided to really stretch ourselves. The results of that stretch will become apparent on the 13th. Many of you have had input that pushed us to reach higher.
Of course there have been many suggestions that are just out of the question. They are either impossible or not realistic at a reasonable price. If those suggestions were serious (I sincerely hope they were not)... a few might actually be disappointed. But I doubt it. Especially if everything is considered.
Long way around saying that many of you have made a difference. That really is what this forum is supposed to be about. If we responded harshly early on, it was just because we didn't know how to do it all. Now we do. Well, at least much of it.
Put your helmet on. The 13th is near. It is only fitting that I should post here 1st, then on red.com. You guys matter.
Jim