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Jim Jannard has stepped down as public face of RED?
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[Andrew Kimery] “You can carefully read all the rumors and vague statements floating around but in the end they are still just rumors and vague statements. If you assumed that RED ONE would be sub-10k and assumed it would be the camera for you then that was your interpretation of the incomplete data at the time. Others, including myself, made different assumptions based on the same incomplete data. Part of the buzz was that it would come in well below the price of its competition and at $17,500 it was much cheaper than its competitors which were in the $70,000-$100,000+ range.”
While that is absolutely true, it ignores the fact that while early RED was building their “buzz” they could just as readily announced price targets and given all the classes of their potential customers much better data to determine whether the announced tools would fit their needs. They chose NOT to do that.
And remember when they finally got around to announcing the $17,000 price point, it was for a camera body that had MAJOR parts of the shooting ecosystem missing (audio?) It seems to me that when initially configured to actually function as a camera, the initial RED cost between $20k and $30k depending on whether you could get the parts required to make it work. There were long delays for the appearance of storage, I/O, Lens options, the aforementioned audio capabilities. In sum, the initial three years were a bit of a shipping cluster***. Again, I want to be clear that over the half a decade it took for RED to go from pretty renderings to a functional camera system, they achieved a lot of good things and eventually did put extremely positive pressure on the upper end of the industry to deliver more capability for less cost. But they did that by undercutting many of the companies that formed the backbone of the professinal video industry. Sony is a shadow of what it used to be in cameras. So too Ikigami, and many others. Maybe that was inevitable. Maybe it was corporate arrogance. History will tell.
I’ll just note that I know more than a few guys who bet their businesses on being early RED adopters – and they had tremendously painful early years before they could recoup their investments in time and lost productivity waiting for a camera system that took years to develop.
In the end, the camera has earned a solid place in production. It’s just that the path there was anything but smooth – and I think that any company that lets their hype get ahead of their reality is in a dangerous place.
Remember “under-promise and over-deliver” – that’s still a pretty sure path to customer satisfaction, IMHO.
Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.
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[Bill Davis] “While that is absolutely true, it ignores the fact that while early RED was building their “buzz” they could just as readily announced price targets and given all the classes of their potential customers much better data to determine whether the announced tools would fit their needs. They chose NOT to do that.”
I totally agree. And the continuous cycle of updates, hype, delays, changes, etc., is why I got off that merry-go-round. When a product is actually done and actually shipping I will read up on it but I’m done following all the ups and downs of development.
Granted for a while it was interesting to see the evolution of the camera and get some glimpses ‘behind the curtain’ but there is something to be said for the traditional route of developing out of the public eye and just shipping a final product that works (as well as any final product works).
RED certainly forced established camera manufacturers to accelerate their dev cycles but I think it was really the combination of RED offering a lower cost high-end camera and the unforeseen explosion of DSLRs in the lower and mid range users that stunned existing camera makers. One or the other I think Sony, Panasonic, etc., could have rolled with but to get hit on both ends of the spectrum like that put the squeeze on them to react.
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[Bill Davis]”Remember “under-promise and over-deliver” – that’s still a pretty sure path to customer satisfaction, IMHO.”
In light of the initial FCPX release that is the funniest thing I have read all day.
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[Michael Gissing] “In light of the initial FCPX release that is the funniest thing I have read all day.”
Why?
I was helping to run the Supermeet and in the audience at NAB for the X intro. Every single thing they promised me, they delivered when the camera shipped. They showed all the new ideas and all the new technology – and when X shipped a few short months later – every single thing they showed was in the software and worked just as advertised.
The negative hue and cry was about whether Apple’s new direction was “too different” – and more critical whether it would satisfy traditional FCP-Legacy editors. The answer was clearly that in a lot of cases, it did not. To move forward, they left a lot of folks behind at least temporarily.
But they never once either promised or implied that what they were releasing was FCP-Legacy 8 – so what’s your point?
To my thinking they TOTALLY under promised and magnificently over-delivered.
They didn’t tell promise me that their new software would change the entire way I approach my video making – giving me new tools that take tons of the organizational drudgery out of my editing. But that’s precisely what they delivered to me.
And X has been great from SQUARE ONE for those of us who didn’t depend on what it didn’t do – or who have come to value what it does that no other software does as well.
Heck, I just got back from a Canon C-100/300 demo – and took my laptop and hard drive, and sure enough, X grabbed everything the camera put out – processed the footage into X’s typical superfast thumbnail proxies, standard footage, and regular Proxies and let me get to work key wording and cutting nearly instantly.
It was (and here’s that word again…) FUN to cut Canon Log C and AVCHD in FCP-X and have it work exactly like my regular DSLR stuff. No fuss, no muss. And I’m looking forward to a future with RAW Video in my workflow.
So X is still passing every test I toss at it with aplomb.
So I’m missing your point I guess.
Just because some people got pissy when X was introduced – and are still pissy about it today – might say more about their inability to move on from 2 years ago – then it does about the actual value of the software as it is today.
X was a problem on release for SOME people. Heck, it still is for some people. And for those people – there are other options. But it’s NEVER been problem for me.
I never did buy that the intro of X was a “disaster”. It just pissed off a lot of people. Change pisses people off. Such is life.
It was anything BUT a disaster for me. It was the start of my next working era.
I look on that intro very fondly. It’s the day I started making my editing life better. For those who chose another path – good luck. Hope you turn out to be every bit as happy with your choice as I am to be working with X.
; )
Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.
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Is anyone else sad that it’s much quieter than it used to be on here? Thankfully Bill is doing his best to keep the debate going!
Steve Connor
There’s nothing we can’t argue about on the FCPX COW Forum
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People can call him whatever and Im sure some have valid reasons.
I dont know any of the big camera/software/hardware makers personally and I honestly couldn’t care less.
I purchased a Scarlet (personal use) cause I had tons of experience with the RED MX and its workflow.
The gear simplify works.
Maybe my past experiences with Canon XL-1, Sony BetaCam/XDCAM, etc… attributed to that move.
I didnt stop using that gear cause the originator is a dick.
LOL! -
Is anyone else sad that it’s much quieter than it used to be on here?
Everyone is too busy using FCPX ((-:
– Ronny
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[Eric Santiago] “The gear simplify works.”
It took a long time for it to simply work.
They did come a long way in a short time with “zero experience”, though.
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[Bill Davis] “ultra high end performance”
Not exactly. I often cite this article and I don’t mention it around Red fans.
https://library.creativecow.net/galt_john/John_Galt_2K_4K_Truth_About_Pixels/1
Here’s the damning quote: So 4K is not these 8 mega pixel or 9 mega pixel or 10 mega pixel CMOS images for the Bayer pattern where they add up all the pixels in a row and say hey, we got 4K. The great perpetrators of that mythology have been RED and Dalsa. That’s why I call these “marketing pixels.” It’s intentional obfuscation. Because they really do nothing to improve image quality. They may improve sales volume. But they don’t do anything to quality.
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Bill,
I think the humor comes at the expense of your seemingly inability, or lack of desire, to look at things from other peoples’ perspectives. Many of the things you say in condemnation of RED could easily be said about Apple and many of the things you say in defense of Apple could easily be said in defense of RED. It all just boils down to one’s own perspective.
For example:
[Bill Davis]
But they never once either promised or implied that what they were releasing was FCP-Legacy 8 – so what’s your point?RED never promised nor implied that they were releasing a camera that would suit your/your demographic’s needs.
They [Apple] didn’t tell promise me that their new software would change the entire way I approach my video making – giving me new tools that take tons of the organizational drudgery out of my editing. But that’s precisely what they delivered to me.
Apple’s official press release called the software “revolutionary” said that it “… completely reinvents video editing…” and called it “…the biggest advance in Pro video editing since the original Final Cut Pro,” That seems to set the bar kinda high, IMO, but I guess that is the point of marketing.
And X has been great from SQUARE ONE for those of us who didn’t depend on what it didn’t do – or who have come to value what it does that no other software does as well.
I’m sure many RED One owners would say the camera has been great for them from square one too as they didn’t depend on what they camera couldn’t do.
You were upset with RED because they didn’t meet your needs even though you didn’t spend a dime on their gear yet you seem perplexed why users that spent years and thousands of dollars (sometimes over six figures) developing FCP-centric workflows were upset with Apple of suddenly EOLing FCP Legend and releasing a new NLE called FCPX.
One man’s floor is another man’s ceiling.
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