Ben Holmes
Forum Replies Created
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[walter biscardi] “JVC has never appealed to me as they just always cut corners to save money. In the long run, that never works out. My belief is save money where you can, but spend money where you have to. High quality monitoring is one place to spend the money.
My VAR was going to bring the JVC out here for me to test next to our Sony CRT but when he took it out of the box, he said to never mind. It was nowhere near the quality that he expected. So I have not seen one in person yet to say definitively that I like or dislike that particular display.
But in general I avoid JVC so I would not even bring that unit in here for testing when we’re ready to replace both our Sonys, probably the end of this year or early 2009.”
It’s a shame to hear you say that again, Walter. Whilst the off-axis comments are fair, the JVC is a very well made, excellent quality product at an exceptional price. I suggest you get your VAR to reconsider his margins and show it to you. He is the only person I have ever heard make negative comments like this about it .
Ben
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We’re gonna need a wider page soon..
Well done DRW.
Ben
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If you’re asking if it can be done LIVE, then the answer is no. Get a Sportswriter, or similar telestrator if you need a live feed. To be honest, hiring one and recording the output would be a pretty good way to achieve this anyway.
If you want to do this in an edit, and render the output, Motion will allow you to draw and record lines etc., so you could build a telestrated sequence using it. Read the Motion manual on recording strokes. You would obviously need a graphics tablet. The excellent and inexpensive Bamboo ones from Wacom would do the job – but make sure you use a big enough one to replicate the natural shapes you would get from a touchscreen.
Ben
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Key is very nice. As ever dependant on shoot, but a flame artist I delivered dpx 2k greenscreens to said it was ‘a very clean key’.
Ben
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[Rennie Klymyk] “Also where is the best place to get ram for these units? “
OWC. They ship worldwide.
Crucial are also excellent resellers.
Ben
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Oh – A Jobsian ‘one more last thing’!
I forgot to say something. Don’t get hung up on the whole resolution thing. You know – 4K? Why?
It’s not about the resolution, not for me anyway. It’s about the look. Well shot footage looks like film. It’s even a little nicer. The images have a creamy, glossy, (any yeah) expensive look about them that you can’t replicate, even with a Pro35 adapter and the right glass. No need to fake it – it’s the only time I’ve added Sapphire’s excellent film filter and it didn’t improve the footage. Clients can’t believe what they got from one camera and a couple of Kinoflows – and then I hand them stills they can use for print advertising. It blows their mind!
Really, that’s the best thing about it – not the technology. Working with the footage tends to smooth away any complaints you may have about the workflow….
Ben
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[Emma McNeill] “Looks like a lot of proprietary equipment, un-proven equipment at that, that provides a small amount of image benefit over the EX1/EX3 or a dozen other cameras.
“Sorry Emma, you mean proprietory like XDCAM or P2 or DVCPRO? I suppose. And anyone seeing RED ONE pictures would expect considerable image benefits over the EX1 – which is an excellent camera, but doesn’t shoot at 120fps.
[Emma McNeill] “$250 for a “red-grip”. If one of our guys said we needed that we would certainly be telling them to get a grip all right! “
red-grip for the RED one? Ever bought an ARRI matte box? $250 is not a lot on a $17,500 camera. The accessories are all pretty fairly priced by pro standards.
[Emma McNeill] “Filming is like stills photography, it’s not the gear, it’s the shooter and until Red get some kit on the ground that everybody can buy/rent and test then it might as well be vaporware. “
They have got gear on the ground. Go rent a RED ONE. Scarlet? Still vaporware alright, but at least RED have a track record now, with kit everyone can buy/rent.
Not trying to be smart, but there’s a lot of FUD around RED – some of it from RED. Be happy to answer any other queries you have.
Kind regards,
Ben
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[Shane Ross] “Personally I am amazed that RED is trying to tout Scarlet as a $3000 camera. Sure, if you don’t want to see what you are shooting. They have to add the basic accessories, THEN announce the price…like you just did. $6000 or so”
RED have made it clear the $3,000 includes the LCD monitor (I think 4.8″). It’s more unclear if it will include a battery, but tangentially comments about ‘shooting right out of the box’ and ‘soccer mom’s’ suggest it will. RED have not yet decided if they will bundle a CF card with it – my guess is they may include one as prices will probably have fallen enough by next year to make it irrelevent, you just have to guess the size.
So you really only need to up the costs a lot if you want handles, matte boxes etc – and last time I looked they weren’t free on other rival cameras. I would expect SCARLET’s fixed 8x lens to be good – RED know glass, and so far their lenses have been great value and quality.
Hope that clears things up a little. I think you may well be right about $6k for some users, but I don’t think students or DV shooters looking to trade up will have to go anywhere near this figure – if RED deliver again. This is a very different market for them to approach than RED ONE, and my guess is manufacturing scales will be the biggest hurdle. Preorder early!
Ben
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Jerry
Welcome to the future – come on in!
A couple of years ago I showed a friend (who is a talented camera operator and now a commercial DP) a story about RED on a gadget blog. It all sounded kind of implausible at the time, but there was big money behind it and they seemed so SINCERE.
A week later I saw him again and my friend had put down a deposit on the camera. It was a fully refundable $1000 – he figured it was worth the ‘not really a’ risk. He spends a lot of his time shooting video with Pro35 adapters etc., and just wanted to be able to get the film look, with film lenses. He didn’t really care about the 4K. Sure, it seemed to future-proof the camera, and he thought it might open up new avenues to him, but as he said for $17,500, if it shot good looking 1080p with 35mm depth of field it was still a bargain…
Fair to say he owes me a beer now – he took delivery of camera number six hundred and something a couple of months ago – long before most of the hire companies here got theirs. He makes extra hiring his to them until their cameras arrive!
As soon as we started testing it, it was clear the camera was something special. We had spent over a year watching test stills posted, and they looked great. Seeing them move was something else. Even the stock RED lens and accessories were excellent, and cost a lot less than many others – such as ARRI! The poster who complained about £250 handles misses the point here, and has obviously never shopped for film accessories – most of REDs are a steal, especially the glass.
He has some high profile commercial work coming up for it now – and I assist with the post workflow and sometimes on set for him. On set with CF cards, it’s very similar to swapping mags on a film camera, doesn’t really break the flow. He also has the RED Drive for continuous shooting. Backing up on set is essential. One thing is certain – this ISN’T video to shoot. It is a camera with 35mm depth and focus requirements, it’s heavy (but shoulderable nonetheless). These problems will be allieviated (eg. focus) with Scarlet and with Epic (which is more powerful but lighter apparently). Oh yeah – and a year after he bought his camera, if he wants to upgrade to Epic, the new 5K camera, they’ll give him FULL NEW COST ($17,500) towards the more expensive Epic. Unbelieveable, and unprecedented in the pro world.
What about post? Yup, there are some kinks, but really not so many now. If we shoot 4k, FCP right now will allow me to import using log and transfer as 2K files – not 16×9 yet, but 2:1. I can resize when I’m done to 16:9 when we do the final export. In the meantime, my Blackmagic multibridge (as well as the Kona’s of course) play back the 2:1 2K files perfectly on my 1080p monitor. The downsized 2k files look AMAZING. Better than anything I have ever had the pleasure of working with. I can apply a ‘look’ to the RAW footage in log and transfer I have set in REDALERT, the free software RED provide for outputting DPX sequences.
RED also provide – for free! – a cut-down version of Assimilate’s Scratch called REDCINE. This allows me (via third party software called Crimson) to cut my shots in FCP (via the proxy files the camera automatically creates, no rendering) and export an EDL to REDCINE, where I can do pan and scan on the 4k files – a wonderful process – and one-light the RAW footage (so much lattitude!) before round-tripping to FCP again as whatever you like – ProRes in my case.
At NAB RED showed Color working natively with r3d files (the RedRAW camera footage) via an as yet unreleased Color update – RED are very tight with Apple. When this is released (within the year we hope!) it will allow everything to be done within FCS. Color will not, however, allow you to work with 4K, as I understand it – not yet. Still, 2K is great – especially as the camera now shoots up to 120 fps at 2K.
Wow – I know this is long and gushy, but anyone working and producing with FCP has to look at RED. Scarlet will be another leap forward. Everyone I work with is falling over themselves to shoot on it, post issues real or imagined, so you’ll come across it sooner or later. Right now, if we want to shoot for TV, HD, we use the RED and log and transfer makes it about as taxing as shooting P2. Ingest is not real time, it’s around 3:1 right now, but that’s not a deal-breaker unless you are shooting a lot every day or multiple cameras. Even on a doco, you’d only shoot a few hours a day, and that’s now an easy overnight ingest.
RED did what they said they would, sooner than anyone said they would, at the price they said they would. And they p*ssed off a lot of people doing it. I think they like that. Some people don’t – and I have varying opinions about the REDUser forum where RED hand out product titbits to a mixture of fanboys and pros. It’s a lot of noise to wade through, unlike the COW. The noise was so bad after the NAB announcement the company founder took a leave of absence from the website. I think he was incredulous that he announced Scarlet and Epic, and got complaints about the features… Mind you, don’t know many billionaires who post regularly on user groups either.
So – longest post ever. If anyone on the COW want to know what it’s really like to work on RED footage in FCP ask away. Yes, I’m a believer, but I’m also a long-time FCP user and sceptic, I promise to tell it like it is.
One last thing from NAB. Next year RED will launch REDRAY alongside Scarlet. It has 4 HD-SDI outs and 4 HDMI outs for 4K playback, which you can play from a CF card slot on the device – making it effectively a deck for the RED camera. Calls on the user-group for it to include deck-control have been met favourably by the company. Oh, and it also has a DVD drive in it. Using a standard DVD-R9, RED claim they can compress onto and playback 2 hours of 4k footage, using new compression algorithms. Well, they DO have Grahame Nattress on board.
So, it’s a 4K movie distribution device and a RED deck. How much you ask? 5K, 3K? 30K? RED claim the target price is UNDER $1,000. And I have to believe them – I’ve seen them deliver.
So if you pre-order one, buy me a beer in 2009 – ok?
Ben
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Paul
Your experience mirrors mine. The TV Logic is hard to source in the UK and too expensive for me. The Panny has a nice picture, but is only 720p. Properly set up the JVC gives as good a picture, and I have had them side by side. I can’t comment on what Walter’s VAR said, it’s a shame Walter didn’t see it himself – Everyone I know who uses it loves it. For me it clearly represents the best quality/value for money at the moment.
Ben