ALEXA vs. RED?

[Gary Adcock]

[David Battistella] “It has obviously made ARRI rethink the D21 and present an offering that is more in line with what RED ONE customers got.”

Note that Arri’s D20 camera was a working camera with ArriRaw output and a 3.5K sensor a full year before the RedOne was announced.

“the ALEXA will be rolled out in june and I am guessing that many TV series will go with a PRORES 4444 workflow, knowing they get all the film style goodies, with a direct to edit, no transcoding, workflow.”

That would be great if the vast majority of Episodic is cut on Avids not FCP. I can assure you that the Avid world in LA is all but stuck in the stone age when it comes to upgrades that may allow ProRes to function in that environment. At the Alexa Launch event, the whining about the lack of DnxHD support was deafening.

“ARRI has pointed this camera at the largest and growing section of the marketplace with “options” to shoot feature film. “

One other thing, other than Panasonic- what other camera company is delivering a professional level tapeless camera that does NOT rely on long GOP processing?
All of the cameras from Sony, JVC and even all of the DSLR’s use long GOP encodes when compressing in camera.

IMHO Arri has placed Alexa squarely where old school workflows and tapeless intersect, a mainstream workhorse that fills a huge gap in the camera marketplace.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows for the Digitally Inclined
Chicago, IL

https://blogs.creativecow.net/24640

[Gary Adcock]

[Shawn Larkin] “Why DeBayer at all? “

because you have too. ALL data on a CMOS sensor must be debayered so you can look at it.

“The offline cutting of ProRes 4444 and linking back / onlining to Arri Raw is perhaps even easier and more efficient than how you must work with RED now.”

I would not consider the 12bit 4444 ProRes codec to be used as offline material for most people working in episodic, now if you need to access the larger image that is captured in ArriRaw that would be different.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows for the Digitally Inclined
Chicago, IL

https://blogs.creativecow.net/24640

[David Battistella]

Gary,

I think we pretty much agree. I still think that RED’s workflow is brilliant. If the QT proxy thing was closer to RT or more reliable (as it might be in CS5) then it could really change the whole transcoding thing.

I hear you about the AVID whine. I have seen it on REDUSER. It’s like AVID is the only editing software on earth.

David

Here is a rather long post I submitted at REDUSER a while back.

Bear with me, this is a long post

I’m writing this post in a public forum because I know the RED team reads this stuff and because I firmly believe that the improvement of REDCODE will have more of an impact than the further improvement of the cameras themselves. I also want to flush out what I don’t know or understand.

With all of this talk about new camera’s and the potential of new cameras, I wanted to take things in a different direction and back toward post production. The most attractive thing to me about the entire RED system is not the Camera. It’s not the RED One, it’s not the EPIC or the Scarlet, in fact it is not any of the camera offerings of RED. What I love about the RED system id REDCODE RAW.

The very idea of RED is fantastic. The whole system, as it is laid out is really intelligent and that is what attracted me and many of the other early adopters to it in the first place. The camera records REDCODE, then through a de-bayering process gives you access to the files through some RED software or you can watch your footage quickly and easily with QuickTime and you can (not really) edit those proxy files in Final Cut Pro, etc.

Shooting RAW gives RED the advantage over many systems, but the disadvantage has been a lack of REALTIME performance of REDCODE. This lack of performance has been the bane as well. The potential is still amazing.

I think that the single thing that will make RED a stronger force in all it’s marketplaces is the improvement and optimization of REDCODE on different platforms.

But REDCODE, the cornerstone of the program and the one that people rely on for the post production half of RED, is not real time. I know that there are those who will say that a scratch system plays back redcode real time but please hear me and read on before you jump all over me on this.

Imagine if the R3D debayering was realtime all the time?

Here is what I mean. I know that REDROCKET helps accomplish this but read on to see how great it could be if it was truly a realtime system.

The Scarlett –
If the fixed lens Scarlett was released with a realtime REDCODE codec I think that would make a much more attractive platform for people who want to go the DSLR route. You’d get RAW motion image in REALTIME instead of a baked in H264 codec that the current DSLR’s offer. Attractive and powerful tool.

RED ONE –
Jim has stated that with the release of EPIC they want to avoid the “beta” problems they faced with the release of the RED One program. I would ask RED to seriously not underestimate how much of those growing pains can be attributed directly toward workflow, post production, the lack of realtime performance and the fears producers had about shooting RED because the post tools were lagging so far behind the camera department. This forced people into complex workflows involving third party software did not match the elegance of the rest of the system.

Having a post background and owning a RED is a major advantage, but we can all agree that the early days of having to transcode footage using Apple compressor, creating DPX files, rendering out of REDCINE or REDALERT, all of which were clunky and unsophisticated ways of extracting images from RED and, dare I say, completely defeats the purpose of shooting RAW.

EPIC –
The high end future is bright, but I wonder about what bringing 5K into post will do and how that will tax existing storage and backup workflows. We all want the best image quality, more latitude and better images. I think there is a great need to push the optimization of REDCODE even further. Why? We are pretty capped out right now in terms of computer speeds, RAM and processors and even a REDROCKET card (a very great move forward) still taxes systems and puts things at their limit. I actually believe that this is exactly what the EPIC program and future camera offering should do.

What I’d like to see:

Release SCARLET with and out-of-the-box optimized REDCODE that is real time. It would be nice if the CORE of the Scarlett program was to give users all of the functionality of P2 or SRS data based cameras but with an optimized REDCODE that works the same way as these systems.
So I would shoot R3D files copy them to my system and edit in realtime in FCS, Premiere. Think of it as the high end DV codec of the future, offering RAW in Realtime would widen the use of the RED system.

For RED ONE and EPIC owners release a version of REDROCKET that works with all of our existing tools. This means that if I shoot on my REDONE and have a REDROCKET, I can edit R3D natively in FCP or premiere, etc. FCP has over a million legal licenses sold. The ability to interact directly with these applications in REAL TIME would be a giant leap forward.

Release CAMERA builds and post tool, QT updates less frequently and simultaneously.

Make transcoding OBSOLETE. I want to shoot the footage, back it up, edit the footage in R3D in FCP and finish it right there or send and XML and the r3d files to any high end system from discreet systems, Flame, Smoke, etc. to baslight, Apple Color, or any number of finishing solutions.
Transcoding to DPX is a major drawback. Do everything to encourace the use of R3D from shoot to finish. Make it the number one priority of the SDK program to ensure R3D implementation is as many systems as possible. Be on top of this as much as you are at releasing camera firmware builds.

Along with MAX mode, introduce a MIN mode that would allow for more realtime performance if I want it.

I know that these are things that many people have asked for but I think it is important to open up the discussion on what kinds of things would repair some of the myths and bad karma put out there about workflow.

As always I am sure this might spark debate. If you agree or want these features please include that too. I am hopeful the RED team will respond.

David

Peace

[Shawn Larkin]

Gary,

I think you misunderstood my post.

You HAVE TO DeBayer with RED. You do not with Alexa since the camera is doing this on the fly to ProRes. That = Better to me.

The ProRes 422 HQ and 4444 Codecs may be “overkill” for offline, but they are small enough file sizes to use in this fashion.

AND if you want to get hardcore, you make sure you have recorded RAW in sync with ProRes so you can online to that for film work. However, iMHO you don’t need this much latitude if you work in ProRes 4444.

Regarding Avid, well, they now support QT and ProRes. But I doubt MC5 will be ubiquitous enough and I am sure old Avid Editors will not be able to jump on this bandwagon–especially in broadcast, which has overpaid for Avid boxes, which have a very simple Codec Workflow.

To me Alexa just makes more sense in post. But that’s me.

[Gary Adcock]

[Shawn Larkin] “You HAVE TO DeBayer with RED. You do not with Alexa since the camera is doing this on the fly to ProRes. “

Shawn.
you HAVE to debayer your image with Alexa also, just because Arri is doing it for you to record ProRes does not mean that the process is not happening. Just because it is not slapping you in the face does not mean that it is not happening somewhere in the process.

ALL CMOS imagers require some type of debayering to allow you to even see the image even DSLR’s

“To me Alexa just makes more sense in post. But that’s me.”

I am a ProRes guy and have been from the beginning, I could not agree more.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows for the Digitally Inclined
Chicago, IL

https://blogs.creativecow.net/24640

[Nigel Thompson]

Pro RES Is the biggest deciding Factor on the Alexa no doubt about it. It actually makes the camera an option the we all wish we had a while now. And you can easily rent a codex portable if your clients ask for that level of acquisition …. but how often will they.

HVX200, RED ONE, FCS and more,
High End, Production & Post Production
in the Caribbean
http://www.bistt.com

[Pat Mcgowan]

which begs the question as to how many other vendors will be able to licence the Pro Res codec moving forward? Does ARRI have exclusivity?

Pat McGowan
President, inMotion DVS Inc.
Ottawa, Canada
Sony PMW350K, Sony EX-3, Sony EX-1
Final Cut Pro (6 seats, CS5 (4 seats), C4D
Small-Tree GranitSTOR 32TB RAID

[Gary Adcock]

[Nigel Thompson] “And you can easily rent a codex portable if your clients ask for that level of acquisition”

Nigel,
One note, currently the only Stwo’s OB1 and Kg’s UDR100 are supporting ArriRaw capture, the Codex handles all of the UC and DPX so those formats are OK.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows for the Digitally Inclined
Chicago, IL

https://blogs.creativecow.net/24640

[Gary Adcock]

[Pat McGowan] “which begs the question as to how many other vendors will be able to licence the Pro Res codec moving forward? Does ARRI have exclusivity? “

AJA has been doing ProRes with apple for years now.
Matrox and DVS’s Clipster now support ProRes capture and playback in hardware now also.

So no Arri does not have an exclusive.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows for the Digitally Inclined
Chicago, IL

https://blogs.creativecow.net/24640

[Nigel Thompson]

Thanks Gary:

thanks for the heads up. Lots of possibilities was also looking at the Onboard from codex. Which kind reminds me of a KiPro without the Pro REs and the all the varying inputs

HVX200, RED ONE, FCS and more,
High End, Production & Post Production
in the Caribbean
http://www.bistt.com