Today’s podcast covers the first day on the show floor at NAB 2006. We combine a roundtable discussion with guests Wally Rodriguez from Upstairs, Miami and Fred Ruckel from Stitch, NY with interviews recorded on the show floor. Topics include: The Red Camera, Apple, Film Scanning, Dust busting, Plug-Ins, Mokey, storage, fxphd… and much more in a wide range of topics in a freeform discussion.
Today’s podcast covers the first day of the floor being open at NAB 2006. We combine a roundtable discussion with guests Wally Rodriguez from Upstairs, Miami and Fred Ruckel from Stitch, NY with interviews recorded on the show floor. Topics include: Apple announcements, Film Scanning, Dust busting, Plug-Ins, Mokey, storage, fxphd… a wide range of topics in a freeform discussion.
Red Camera was launched today at NAB 2006.
Jim Jannard’s secret plan started in 1999 has been to build a revolutionary video camera. Actually calling it a video camera is fairly inaccurate. This camera is awesome, and will change the capture market dramatically.
We spoke to Jim Jannard and members of his team about the most exciting new product of NAB 2006.
– By the way Jim Jannard’s steel business card lists his role in his company RED Digital Camera as ‘Madman”. Jim does not do recorded interviews but as fxguide bought Red Camera serial number 00022 for fxphd.com training work, he generously gave us a personal tour of the new camera. He als offered to personally help if we had any issues with the new camera. From the look on his face you know he was serious – this man loves cinematography and cameras.
If a normal HD video camera is about a 2.1 Megapixel camera then the Red Camera is a 11.4 Mega pixels Movie camera.
The Mysterum sensor is at the core of RED Camera. It has a 4520 by 2540 pixel resolution which the company calls 2540P (5 times the resolution of a $100,000 Sony F900 camera). The sensor is 24.4 x 13.7 mm, which is about the size of Super 35mm film. So you can use any BL mount lens and the camera will focus like a standard 35mm film camera with similar depth of field etc.
The camera also boosts exceptional frame rates:
At 4 K , 2540P, its 1 – 60 fps
Windowed 2K is 1 – 120 fps. That is true progressive 120P; twice the frame rate of any current HD camera. In film terms it provides a 500% slow mo direct from the camera.
The dynamic range of the cpatured images is vital for visual effects work — not just the resolution, and the Red Camera has dynamic range similar to 35mm film. Estimated to be between 11 and 15 stops.
The Mysterum sensor is upgradable. This means if the Red company comes out with a better sensor, you can upgrade just the sensor and keep the camera. With so many changes in digital cameras happening the company is pushing that this new camera is Modular and upgradable, so it will “not be obsolete in three years.”
Click here to view a QuickTime of movielink(red/redc.mov,the 9AM Monday unveiling of the Red camera).
In addition to the camera, there are some extremely interesting recording options. Normally, recording options are very expensive and often limited. To address this the company has Red RAM and Red RAID. This allows for a in-camera Flash drive or a cabled RAID drive. To work with the huge data rates involved, the company also introduced Red Code, which is a visually lossless codec done in camera before recording to the Red Drive and Red Disc. We asked Ted Schilowitz, “Leader of the Rebellion” at Red Camera, if this compression would compare to HD compression. Would it be virtually lossless like HD-SR or quite lossy like HDCAM? “More like SR, maybe better” was his response. Without giving details he also stated that “there will be a recording solution for sub $1000.”
Thus on the camera you will be able to record up to 2K and then with an external Red Disc you will be able to record up to 4K. The output from the camera – the O out (O for Okley) will perhaps be something like Infiniband.
(Note: Ifiniband is a low-latency, high-performance, serial I/O interconnect. Its serial bus is bidirectional, with 2.5Gbps single-data rate throughput in each direction per connection. It also supports double-data rate and quad-data rate for 5Gbps and 10Gbps throughput.)
At 2K resolution, the company estimates the Red Code will allow 1 hour of recording into the Red Ram option on camera.
The main camera weighs just 7 pounds without a lens. The camera has a Red Cage option for accessories, and Jim Jannard mentioned that a stedicam rig was also being worked on. Shown in prototype form only was a rifle style shoulder mount.
Oh… and one more thing.. the price… only $17,500 for the camera and the first 300mm Red Lens is just $4,750. So for $22,250 you have a 4K 2540 60P camera. While the company has a working prototype, no images were shown. We asked Jannard about the lens quality as this is really his company’s optical specialty. He explained that while Cooke lenses are brilliant, Red is building for a much higher volume and yet it still produced exceptional clarity in the lab. The first lens the 300mm is about 4 lbs, making the total weight under 12 pounds for camera and lens. Schilowitz pointed out that the team was working on a zoom lens, which is currently spec’d as a 11-100mm lens.
While naturally most focus was on image quality, 4 channels of audio at 24 bit 48Khz or higher is standard. “We know where our baseline is and we may go up from there,” explains Schilowitz. He says”96 – 192 is not out of the range of possibility , more than 4 channels not out of the range of possibility,” stressing that the camera was still in developement.
Schilowitz stated that the target is to ship units before the end of the calendar year 2006 and at the moment ” we are on target”. With this low price point we asked whether Red was likely to be able to meet the demand for delivery or would there end up being a trickle roll out. Schilowitz replied “we are geared to mass-production to meet the demand, and we designed that from the outside”. Schilowitz would not be drawn on the size of the development team, but he did say “it was large”. One of the tasks at hand is to set up a global service and support team, “we know we can’t just hand people the camera – a camera like this needs support”.
AJA, Assimilate and Apple are know to be development partners but these have not been announced formally. The details are expected to be published soon, but we noticed an Apple 2K FCP system running in the private Demo room.
In closing, the only place to currently buy the Red Camera is at the NAB show. With your deposit you are presented with a gift box containing a key piece of the camera casing with your serial number stamped in. When the cameras are produced you receive the rest of the camera, with the matching serial number, of course.
We say “bring it on”. Fxguide was there at 9am on the first day of the show – and as the crowd gasped and clapped – the sense of history was strong. It is, of course, now down to Red to deliver, but having spoken directly to Jannard – we were left in no doubt as to his commitment to make this happen and exceed even the high expectations that were being set at the show.
Red production and filming training will be included in fxphd.com when the camera comes available, including the pipeline for Red production via Final Cut Pro and into VFX.
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