RED 8k camera, a sign of things to come from apple?

[Bill Davis]

Someday we’ll probably see a “bundle” on an Apple Store Web-site where ordering a turnkey 8K end-to-end Video Production system essentially becomes a single click “impulse purchase” thing? ????????

“Why, you whippersnapper, I remember when buying video gear took forever – you needed your integrators, engineers, purchase orders and bank approvals and it took weeks or MONTHS! You kids today – it’s all so easy – you don’t know ‘nothing!” (crabby old video pro walks away, fuming)

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Andre Van berlo]

What kids use for video these days has definitely changed. At the college where i teach the students rarely use the “pro 4K cameras” but rather use their phones and dslrs instead. The pro camera’s are simply collecting dust. Not saying the dslrs are better but they’re sometimes more convenient for them i guess.

It wouldn’t surprise me if RED and mac will be more integrated in a possible new mac pro. Not sure what kind of horsepower is needed to edit 8k footage but i am assuming it needs a seriously beefy workstation.

[Tom Sefton]

Well although it’s a stunning new release from red, with a new sensor that performs much better in low light than ever before, it’s not the first 8K camera from them. The first was the epic-w and was released in autumn 2016.

Certainly 8K will become a new standard for editing, but with the advancing clamour for VR, expect multistream 8K editing to be an aim for most hardware manufacturers, especially once red figures out how to make the 8K cameras smaller and lighter…

Co-owner at Pollen Studio
http://www.pollenstudio.co.uk

[Oliver Peters]

Like the RED Raven deal from Apple?

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Andre Van berlo]

I didn’t know that Tom, i think what triggered my curiousity is the 8k display rumour and the the new 8k camera from RED. especially since RED and apple are partners now and people were already speculating what could come from that partnership.

It is the first 8k RED camera since their partnership became known and it wouldn’t surprise me if there might be more to it than what we can see at firdt glance. As Oliver pointed to Red Raven, and Bill to a bundle. I can’t see why a pro machine , camera , and display couldn’t be sold together. Anyone buying that camera will need a good workstation and maybe apple want to more fully integrate the 2.

Obviously i am guessing here. Partly because i would love to see a new modular mac and a new apple display…

[Michael Gissing]

[Andre van Berlo] “Not sure what kind of horsepower is needed to edit 8k footage but i am assuming it needs a seriously beefy workstation.

A lot of the beef needs to be in the graphic processors. 8 gig of on board graphics RAM is considered minimum for 4k so a suitable graphics card with a minimum 16 gig DDR GPU is required possibly more. Which is why I would expect a PC with onboard slots for such a beast of a card will be available sooner than a Mac Pro is likely to be. Also Apple will need to be giving better options for NVIDIA graphics as they are currently ahead of the game.

The idea of putting the GPU in the monitor is silly unless the GPU is fully upgradeable by a user. Monitors last years longer than a GPU. I’ve been upgrading GPU two to three times faster than display monitors. Also if you want to see 8k on a monitor, then via a Decklink type card is probably smarter so you see true color space and frame rates. Your computer monitors do not need to display 8k to edit but a separate display monitor that you can calibrate that displays everything from Rec 709 to HDR is a better bet. Also watching 8k on a monitor smaller than 30 inch is also not that smart. I’m grading 4k on a 65″ LG monitor. Next purchase will be an OLED and if I jump to 8k it is likely 85” so I can see what 8k footage looks like in full size full res.

[Andre Van berlo]

“a suitable graphics card with a minimum 16 gig DDR GPU is required possibly more. ”

So in theory the new imac pro could edit it but wouldn’t have the 8k display and have 5k instead.

I wonder what size an 8K apple display would be, can’t imagine them going all the way to 65″. If a monitor graphics card could handle just the display part of things and the mac pro’s on board gpu the editing processes then that would be ok. But that’s probably not how it works.

[Michael Gissing]

[Andre van Berlo] “So in theory the new imac pro could edit it but wouldn’t have the 8k display and have 5k instead.”

Editing 8k is more than just GPU. Drive through put & CPU cores/ threads matter as well. An iMac would not be a machine I would think of when editing 8k unless it was a proxy workflow. The machines that need the real grunt are the ones doing the grading & finishing. They are less likely to be a Mac these days as Win or Linux machines are easier to build and upgrade with the latest grunt from the widest selection of manufacturers.

If the new MacPro is looking to play in that high end space then I would be surprised. I’m not sure they will have any advantage other than a personal preference for an OS. I think the days of Mac being at the forefront of hardware grunt for post production has past and I don’t see they have much incentive to play in that space.

As to the general thing of RED and Apple seeming to be in a partnership, I am curious to see if it is serious or just a bit of vanity. I would have thought the best advantage for Apple to come from RED would be their Hydrogen phone screens. Much of the profit in an iPhone goes to Samsung for the screens. Maybe this dabble with production bundling is more to do with RED ultimately supplying phone and tablet screens to Apple. Curious then that the Hydrogen is Android, but then again so is Samsung phones.

[Robert D’alexis]

[Michael Gissing] “A lot of the beef needs to be in the graphic processors. 8 gig of on board graphics RAM is considered minimum for 4k so a suitable graphics card with a minimum 16 gig DDR GPU is required possibly more. Which is why I would expect a PC with onboard slots for such a beast of a card will be available sooner than a Mac Pro is likely to be.”

I believe such a card already exists: https://www.nvidia.com/content/dam/en-zz/Solutions/design-visualization/documents/Quadro-P6000-US-12Sept.pdf

[Michael Gissing]

[Robert d’Alexis] “I believe such a card already exists:”

Yep that looks like the business. I’m sure a lot will wait for a GTX version so they can afford to buy two.