

RED Epic camera - six times the resolution of HD video - helwr
http://khalednoorblog.com/?p=1226

======
npalli
Werner Herzog was apparently not impressed

[http://www.dgaquarterly.org/BACKISSUES/Winter2010/DGAIntervi...](http://www.dgaquarterly.org/BACKISSUES/Winter2010/DGAInterviewWernerHerzog.aspx)

 _Q: What about shooting digitally?

A: We used the RED camera for My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done. It's an
immature camera created by computer people who do not have a sensibility or
understanding for the value of high-precision mechanics, which has a 200-year
history. It's terrible: Whenever you have to reboot the camera, it takes 4½
minutes or so. It drove me insane, because sometimes something is happening
and you can't just push the button and record it. An assistant cameraman said
this camera would be ideal if we were filming the National Library in Paris,
which has been sitting there for centuries. But everything that moves faster
than a library is a problem for the RED. Super 35 mm celluloid is still
better_

~~~
mey
I am a little surprised that digital filming isn't hitting it's stride when
photographers have taken to the digital transition. Not sure if the celluloid
comment is only in reference RED or in reference to digital film in general.

I see parallels to audiophile type comments regarding analog v digital.

~~~
alexqgb
Given the exponentially lower amount of data handled by still cameras, it was
much easier for them to eclipse 35mm film in terms of quality. Keep in mind
that even 'burst mode' on a high-end DSLR only runs at 3-5 frames per second
(not 30), and still requires a few seconds between bursts to process and write
to disk.

Film not only shoots at 24 frames per second (or more), but the final picture
has to play on a screen that is literally two stories high. The scale is
unforgiving. Things that would fly on television get suddenly ugly -
especially if you're only starting with 1080 lines of resolution. And that's
before your picture has gone through layers and layers of heavy post
production - every one of which constitutes a round of transcoding, and thus,
a source of degradation and artifacting.

In other words, not only are you shooting far more frames in far less time
(and needing hardware that can do sustained encoding for each one in real
time) but, you're doing so at exceptionally high bit-rates, oversampling like
hell so that you'll still have a clean picture even after running it through
the wringer of post-production. Encoding for broadcast, DVD and the web (which
is par for the course with any professional shoot) only adds an extra layer of
abuse. When Michael Mann was shooting Collateral (which made heavy use of HD),
there were a number of scenes where they had to shoot film, just because the
HD rigs capable of supporting adequate bitrates came with umbilical cords that
were simply too cumbersome for handheld setups where agility was essential.

There's also been an optical issue, in that sensors for digital motion cameras
have typically been much smaller than those used for digital still or motion
film cameras. Even if the resolution is commensurate (which is hasn't been),
the fact that the same number of scan lines are packed into a smaller area has
consequences in terms of the optical effects that the camera can achieve.
Specifically, a larger imagine surface allows for a shallower depth of field.
Given that really good cinematographers can make masterful use of DOF, it's
understandable that they don't like the constricted range that comes with
smaller, digital sensors. For guys like Lucas, Fincher, and Jackson - who all
do a huge amount of pre-visualization and heavy CG in post - this isn't such a
big deal. They can plan around it, or deal with it after the fact. But in a
more traditional setting - and for filmmakers who don't have the same hardcore
ILM/WETA ethos and skill - the trade-off isn't so favorable.

All that said, my sense is that this RED camera marks a tipping point, where a
lot of the advantages that film has held will start to erode in earnest. The
thing that's really going to drive this is the exceptionally high dynamic
range (that is to say, the range of light levels the camera can handle before
the picture either drops into black, or blows out in a haze of pure white).
Higher performance in this area really was the trump card for film. But now
that RED is not just meeting, but exceeding the long-established benchmarks, a
lot of people who have stuck with film are going to ditch it in favor of a
much higher ceiling. I mean, wow, 18 stops - that's hot.

~~~
eftpotrm
_Keep in mind that even 'burst mode' on a high-end DSLR only runs at 3-5
frames per second (not 30), and still requires a few seconds between bursts to
process and write to disk._

No.

My 4 year old consumer level Nikon D80 will hit 3FPS. Yes, that's with a
buffer, but in practice if I turn the JPEG quality down a touch, it'll run for
a long time at that rate while pushing out 10MP files. I've no idea what it'd
do at even 2K resolution but it'd be fast.

I forget exactly which SLR is the fastest at present but 10+FPS is very doable
in a device costing a few thousand on 10-15MP files, far below the price level
of a RED One.

Also....

 _Film not only shoots at 24 frames per second (or more), but the final
picture has to play on a screen that is literally two stories high. The scale
is unforgiving. Things that would fly on television get suddenly ugly -
especially if you're only starting with 1080 lines of resolution._

Toy Story 1 was rendered at 1536x830 and upsampled to 2048x1108 in post
production. You really don't need as much resolution as you think.

~~~
alexqgb
Exactly, you "turn the JPEG quality down a touch". That's a problem for two
reasons. One, you're reducing the file quality (which may not create visible
problems initially, but - I promise you - will cause all sorts of ugliness to
appear if you post-process the frame several times over, as is par for the
course in professional film and video production). Also, you're shooting JPEG,
not RAW, meaning you're comparing apples to oranges. Try that test again using
a file format comparable to what D-Cinema uses. Again, 3-5 frames is on the
high end, and WAY short of the sustained 24 fps needed to compete with film.

Keep in mind that a 400' film load (a standard measure) gives you 11 minutes
of shooting at 24fps. Every time you stop the camera to swap magazines, you
cause a break in the shooting. Producers want to decrease the number of
interruptions like this, not increase them. One of the (many) things video
needs to offer to be competitive is equal or greater time between reloads.
With digital, memory capacity isn't the only limit on run time. The reality of
cameras shutting down due to overheating (a non-issue with film, but something
I've experienced with Canon 5Ds) also needs to be accounted for. And again,
this is all about beating established industry benchmarks. On a high-end
shoot, your camera package is actually one of your smaller costs. Saving a few
bucks here is bad economics when it leads to delays that put your crew into
overtime.

Regarding "Toy Story". That's a CG film. At the time it was made, per-frame
rendering times for (a) the source images (b) the up-sampling and (c) the
film-out were all measured in minutes, hours, and sometimes days - not
fractions of seconds. Because the production wasn't having to contend with
anything happening in real time, they could afford to take the extra time to
create those initial frames using ridiculously high bit rates and no
compression whatsoever. In other words, they were free from the two primary
sources of trouble that lead to visual artifacts in upresed images. And since
the entire film was created in-computer, there was no post-processing
whatsoever. That is to say, the upsampled files were first generation copies
of (exceedingly clean) master images.

It's worth remember in that the massive render farms used to deliver all this
are exactly that - massive. As in, they need their own air-conditioned
warehouses. That kind of hardware support isn't even feasible for studio
shooting, let alone location work. So sure, you COULD master at 1k and go up,
but only under incredibly controlled conditions that result in bills averaging
$1 million per finished minute.

Shooting action live then heavily processing your material in post is a
completly different ballgame. Personally, I'm thrilled that video solutions
are coming to market that can (finally) rival film, which is a colossal pain
in the ass, and the source of some pretty major creative constraints. Still,
the competition had some cons that were (a) major and (b) non-obvious to non-
professionals. So I wanted to help mey understand why the change from film to
digital hadn't occurred with the same speed and thoroughness as it did in the
still-photography world.

------
bgentry
RED has been driving some tremendous innovation in this space. Their cameras
are an order of magnitude cheaper than anything remotely comparable, and
they've built the entire ecosystem around standard video editing software
(Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere, etc.) making this kind of technology
accessible to a whole new market of amateur and non-feature filmmakers for
whom it was previously out of reach.

They are a fascinating company born out of Jim Jannard's passion. The only
reason they exist is because the industry dinosaurs had been happy to eschew
innovation in favor of consistent and sustained profit models. Jannard's only
goal is to build the camera that the competitors told him he couldn't have.

------
sandofsky
I can't speak for this model. However, in the past, the problem with the RED
has been the rolling shutter, the same problem you find in DSLR's.

Instead of capturing full frames, it's scanning from top to bottom at 24fps.
It's fine for static shots, but as you introduce motion, or fast moving
subjects, you get a "jelly" effect.

I have a friend who does highend visual effects. In his experience, the RED
also isn't suited for green screen work. Can't remember off the top of my head
if it's for rolling shutter or the dynamic range, but it's another limitation.

However, it hits a sweet spot for less demanding productions, like The Social
Network.

~~~
Entlin
The rolling shutter artifacts are present, yes, but it's in the range of a
movie camera. Movie cameras also have some slight jelly in fast pans,
something not many people are aware of.

"measured the mysterium (RED ONE) at 9ms, the X (EPIC) at 5ms, and film at
4ms. All of them substantially faster than other sensors which can be in the
20's."

<http://reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?42240>

"The mechanical shutter "wipes" across the film in a similar way to how a CMOS
sensor is read. The trick to CMOS is getting the read-reset time similar to
the mechanical shutter. EPIC does that. (...) there is skew in a film camera
with a mechanical shutter, one of the many reasons film has "character"."

[http://reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?55397-General-
Questi...](http://reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?55397-General-Question-
About-CMOS-Rolling-Shutter&p=727520&viewfull=1#post727520)

------
elliottcarlson
Did the stolen RED EPIC ever turn up? Last I heard there was a $100k reward on
it.

~~~
mashmac2
Nope. It's still missing.

[http://reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?53549-ALERT!-Please-...](http://reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?53549-ALERT!-Please-
read./page39)

~~~
nitrogen
I think it would be awesome if the stolen camera were recovered a century from
now and displayed in the Smithsonian.

------
hop
Looking forward to seeing what the next Canon 5D will do.

Could very well have 2k resolution and do 120+ fps at lower resolutions with
it's big full frame sensor.

~~~
ashconnor
At a fraction of the price.

~~~
protomyth
I don't think that will be accurate with Scarlet showing up.

The other big difference from the Red cameras and Canon is RAW versus a
heavily compressed h264.

~~~
alexqgb
Which means it's not even remotely comparable for professional work. Keep in
mind that it's not just the amount, but the type of compression that's
decisive.

Spatial codecs (also known as intraframe schemes) deal with each frame
independently. That is to say, they don't apply calculations across a set of
frames, even when much of the information is repeated.

Temporal codecs (also known as interframe, of which H.264 is the most popular
example) achieve vastly lower file sizes by applying samples from one image
across a set (aka a 'group of pictures, or GOP). This is fantastically useful
for broadcast and streaming, since you get high visual quality in an efficient
package. But if you try to DO anything with that video (reformatting,
enlarging, compositing, etc.) the downside will become very clear very
quickly.

Typically, professional shows are going to demand a lot of flexibility in
post, meaning they're likely to insist on spatial codecs whenever possible.

~~~
protomyth
I have seen some 5D stuff that was pretty good and House used one for an
episode. I think the Epic is going to be a big hit (size, 5K raw) and I expect
the same of Scarlet.

~~~
alexqgb
House is engineered for television, not big screen projection. And it has no
time of money for serious effects. Also, it's mostly shot in situations with
very controlled lighting. Add all that up and it means there's a lot that they
can get away with. It's great that they did. But that was very recently, and
again, the original question was 'why didn't this happen a decade ago?'.

------
mashmac2
For those who want the info from the source:

<http://www.red.com/products/epic>

Check out the features tab for HD comparison, and tech specs for the details.

------
protomyth
If you want in-depth coverage of the Epic (and other digital cameras) listen
to "the rc podcast" at <http://www.fxguide.com/podcasts/>

Their Canon 5D and 7D stuff was really informative also.

------
Keyframe
Peter Jackson/WETA bought 30 EPICs... if it's good for them, it's good for
everyone.

------
drinian
Now that we've got the resolution up to where it should be, can we start
shooting at higher framerates, like 60 or 120 fps? I'm sick of flicker.

~~~
alexqgb
The highest hurdle is bitrate.

------
tintin
Can anyone explain the use of such high resolutions? I know it could be nice
to crop some parts of the movie and still have a nice set of pixels. But in
reality you will just shoot the scene again or leave it out. Nowadays
everybody is shooting millions of pixels but I never saw someone who used a
cropped versions professionally.

~~~
nitrogen
Better aliasing performance (things like chain link fences won't look jagged),
more sharpness retained after multiple rounds of processing, etc. Try
recording a TV show in SD resolution, then record the HD version and resize it
to SD. The HD-scaled-to-SD version is much sharper than the SD version.

~~~
tintin
Ofcourse the SD TV show will look less sharp then the HD version scaled to SD.
But this doesn't have anything to do with my question.

Last time I checked HD is around 2Mpx. Why would you need 14Mpx as source
material? 7 times oversampling?

~~~
alexqgb
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.

------
daimyoyo
Meh. The pricetag on this makes it really unappealing to anyone except
multimillionaires and professional cinematographers. When Red can produce a 4K
camera for under $1,000 I'll be the first in line to get one. Until then it's
little more than a curiosity. An awesome curiosity but a curiosity
nonetheless.

~~~
mashmac2
Well, in reality this price is fantastic for a cinematography camera. When you
consider the prices for everything else on a shoot, and how a camera is
typically rented instead of bought for a feature film, this camera (and the
RED ONE) is revolutionary.

Sony's recent release of the F3 has them playing catchup, and they've
announced plans for a 4K cinematography camera, but this camera is ahead of
its time, and a huge step forward over the RED ONE.

And this camera isn't for anyone who doesn't know their way around a video
camera in full manual mode (shutter speed, iris, focus, zoom, white balance,
gamma, knee, etc...). This is not a camera for anyone except for filmmakers.

