Build 16 news...

[Jannard]

We are now testing the 1st version of Build 16... it is pretty incredible. We fully expect to show this build at NAB with the Alpha build 16 going to a select few. The internal build of RED Alert! now supports firmware Build 16.

We appreciate everyone's patience... it will be worth it.

As soon as we have a stable build, we will put our SDK together and release it. We are very happy that we have several 3rd parties lined up and waiting for the SDK which will pave the way to easy access for everyone.

BTW, Build 15 should become a release build any minute...

Jim

[C.H.Haskell]

NAB is going to be well worth going to this year, thanks Jim and look forward to meeting you.

[Jannard]

Build 16 is one of the three "small" new things at the RED booth... there will also be three "BIG" new things.

Jim

[Vladimir Eugene]

Staying up late is begining to pay off. Thanks for the good news.

Vladimir

[Jannard]

I'm not sure what is "late" and what is "early" anymore... :-)

Jim

[Elizabeth Lowrey]

I'm excited to hear about build 16. When pictures already look this good, I feel downright greedy for imagining that they mightl look even better.

BTW, I hope the audio issues (phantom power, having to use special cables with resistors, etc.) become top priority once build 16 is done.

[Sanjin Jukic]

Build 16 is one of the three "small" new things at the RED booth... there will also be three "BIG" new things.

Jim

6 great things from RED at NAB.

3 small and 3 big things.

1. The first small thing is build 16.

What could be the rest?

2.?

3.?

1. The first big thing is Scarlet.

What could be the rest?

2.?

3.?

[Bruce Allen]

We are now testing the 1st version of Build 16... it is pretty incredible. We fully expect to show this build at NAB with the Alpha build 16 going to a select few. The internal build of RED Alert! now supports firmware Build 16.

We appreciate everyone's patience... it will be worth it.

As soon as we have a stable build, we will put our SDK together and release it. We are very happy that we have several 3rd parties lined up and waiting for the SDK which will pave the way to easy access for everyone.

Hear hear. Thanks Jim and hope you guys have a ton of fun at NAB.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

[Nick Wolf]

A Truly Historic Moment Of Epic Proportions ... JJ You are an Exceptional Man! What an opportunity you have made available to us all...Very generous indeed...Thank you.

DogDay

[Corrado Silveri]

Great Jim,
many thanks, as usual...

[Brook Willard]

Can't wait to hear the build 16 details. How long has it been in the works?

Looking forward to NAB as you might expect. Hell, I'm already in Vegas. I think I beat you guys. :)

[Pawel Achtel]

6 great things from RED at NAB.

3 small and 3 big things.

1. The first small thing is build 16.

What could be the rest?

2.?

3.?

1. The first big thing is Scarlet.

What could be the rest?

2.?

3.?

What could be the rest?

2. A 4K Projector :w00t:

Go to Wikipedia and you can read

"...They also used the venue to announce that they would be developing a "Professional Pocket Cam" and their own 4k projector, but refused to give any more details...."

Cheers,

Pawel
www.achtel.com

[Dominic Jones]

I think you'll see the 18-85 T2.9 lens there too.

I think that's a pretty "big" thing, if it's as good as it looks like it will be, but judging by Red's standards, likely that'll be one of the "small" things!

[laguun]

As soon as we have a stable build, we will put our SDK together and release it. We are very happy that we have several 3rd parties lined up and waiting for the SDK which will pave the way to easy access for everyone.

Excellent! 3hrd party support is -the- main "feature" we have been missing in red.

[Stephen Gentle]

As soon as we have a stable build, we will put our SDK together and release it. We are very happy that we have several 3rd parties lined up and waiting for the SDK which will pave the way to easy access for everyone.

I can't wait - great news

[laguun]

I'm not sure what is "late" and what is "early" anymore... :-)

Jim
"early" is considered the one with the yellow star in the sky, "late" the one with the white star in sky. (hope i didnt mix them up)

[James Press]

Time is relative in a paradigm shift.

[David Birdy]

Great News thanks Jim!
I look forward to seeing you at the NAB!

O yeah I almost forgot.... I need my freaking cameras!!!!...Please!!!

Best Regards
Dave

[Radoslav Karapetkov]

I'm not sure what is "late" and what is "early" anymore... :-)

Jim

Time and space seem to become relative at REDUser.

RED Team, you did it!

Your broke the speed-of-light limit.

(another useful side effect).

:).

[Eddie]

Great news!!!

I am so happy that the SDK is going to be released, now all my worries about "post-traumatic-post workflow-syndrome" have disaappeared.... Remarkable

thanks again

[Bing Bailey]

I think you'll see the 18-85 T2.9 lens there too.

I think that's a pretty "big" thing, if it's as good as it looks like it will be, but judging by Red's standards, likely that'll be one of the "small" things!

jim already said the 18-85 lens wasn't part of the big or little things

[Graeme Nattress]

Looking forwards to seeing you all there. I know there's a number of people who have told me that they will be at the RED tent "first", so it will be interesting to see who actually is there first.

Graeme

[Antoine Fabi]

See you there!
I just hope it will be easier than last year.
Getting in the booth was @#@# last year...patience, patience.
Makes me think... two years ago, we had plenty of time to talk at RED's booth.

Ah ! Popularity!

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I know there's a number of people who have told me that they will be at the RED tent "first", so it will be interesting to see who actually is there first.

I'll be one of the first ones there... on tuesday the 15th.

[Paul Hazlett]

I am already at the convention center camping out. was told not to light anymore campfires though

[Ivan G]

I don't know what I'm stoked about!!! Receiving my RED this week or NAB!! Talk about a multiple orgasm :)

[Casey Green]

Build 16 is one of the three "small" new things at the RED booth... there will also be three "BIG" new things.

Jim

Looking forward to seeing everyone! This will be my 10th NAB. And the best one yet!

Bring it on, Jim! (and, as always, thanks a million)

[Andrew M.]

BTW, Build 15 should become a release build any minute...

Jim

I didn't sleep the whole night waiting?
??

[number6]

Had always thought that I was much too far doun the list for getting my camera(s). Now I think I'm at about the optimal point.

[number6]

Your broke the speed-of-light limit.

:).

So, HOW many frames per second does that translate to?

[C.H.Haskell]

just to confirm, 16 will be released at NAB for sure?

[Brook Willard]

just to confirm, 16 will be released at NAB for sure?
As Jim said:

We fully expect to show this build at NAB with the Alpha build 16 going to a select few.

[Frank Weeks]

As soon as we have a stable build, we will put our SDK together and release it.

Huge!

[Joel Kaye]

Since this is a build 16 thread does anyone know what build 16 specifically addresses? Other than the massively overvague "image quality".

I mean, are we talking the sensor profiling is being changed to be more tungsten friendly? Are we gaining a couple stops of sensitivity. Are we gaining more headroom on the high end? Or is noise reduction being added to the entire chain. Is phantom power in there?

[David Wyatt]

Since this is a build 16 thread does anyone know what build 16 specifically addresses? Other than the massively overvague "image quality".

I mean, are we talking the sensor profiling is being changed to be more tungsten friendly? Are we gaining a couple stops of sensitivity. Are we gaining more headroom on the high end? Or is noise reduction being added to the entire chain. Is phantom power in there?

I'm guessing less noise, more latitude (closer to the stated 11 1/3rd stops...maybe more...who knows:sorcerer: ?) Higher frame rate for 4K (60fps in my dreams, maybe more like 50fps for now? Maybe 3K frame rates will jump too?), 16:9 proxies will finally work, etc? It's already a pretty cool camera, how much cooler can you get?:matrix:

[Bing Bailey]

it can always get cooler and because its a firmware upgrade we won't all be shelling out every time there is another feature added. its a brave new world

[Steve Freebairn]

Come on Adobe! We need you to work with Red and get us some workflow magic going on.

[jbeale]

Note, given a 12-bit A/D, they can't get more than 12 stops DR without using pre-A/D nonlinearity, which would mean a change in hardware plus a change in philosophy- doesn't seem that likely. Remember that the DR as it exists now is 11+ stops "total" when you disregard noise. Most people do care about noise at some level, so the "effective" or "usable" DR is lower. So there's plenty of room for usable DR improvement without the "total" DR changing at all.

[KETCH ROSSi]

Build 16 is one of the three "small" new things at the RED booth... there will also be three "BIG" new things.

Jim

Now that I do, finally have my RED on hands, nothing is "small" ... anymore!

Last year at NAB, I was a RESERVATION holder, and exited as HELL!!!

This year at NAB I'm a RED ONE owner, and I'm as exited as I ever remember been for what is to come.

Keep it up Jim, I'm sure to follow for a very long time to come.

Ciao

[Blair S. Paulsen]

My best guess is a fine tuning of the demosaicing algorithm to accomplish two important things.

1) A softer shoulder on the top end to manage highlights so overexposure looks more like film. This will allow you to open up a bit more to get farther up off the noise floor.

2) Better noise kill in the toe by more intelligently differentiating between fine detail and artifacting. Perhaps there's a way to reference the red and green channels to analyze the blue channel? Just a guess.

Useable DR is so dependent on noise tolerance (which, as it turns out, is rather significantly influenced by how much genuine picture information you have in the lower end of the blue channel) that assigning a DR number is hardly an empirical exercise. That said, my gut tells me there is another full stop of real world DR available with better optimization and that is what I expect out of Build 16.

[Paul Hazlett]

Very Insightfull Mr. Paulsen. I hope your right

[Andrew M.]

Yes, this is a great idea, down at the floor level going monochrome will not make a difference. Combaining R and G to fix the B is great idea!

[SF Geek]

So, what I gather is that we won't get beta 16 until after NAB.

[Jannard]

I'm guessing less noise, more latitude (closer to the stated 11 1/3rd stops...maybe more...who knows:sorcerer: ?) Higher frame rate for 4K (60fps in my dreams, maybe more like 50fps for now? Maybe 3K frame rates will jump too?), 16:9 proxies will finally work, etc? It's already a pretty cool camera, how much cooler can you get?:matrix:

Let's not get carried away...

Jim

[Mike Prevette]

Jim "The Voice of Reason" Jannard

[fisherofmen]

1) A softer shoulder on the top end to manage highlights so overexposure looks more like film. This will allow you to open up a bit more to get farther up off the noise floor.


That would be awesome....although RED already handles the highlights very well...if you handle the RED right. :biggrin:

[Ben A.]

Wait a Min Jim! I sure hope you are not counting Jarred as one of your "Big" things! :P

Ben

[Axel Mertes]

Wait a Min Jim! I sure hope you are not counting Jarred as one of your "Big" things! :P

Ben

Nope, I'd thought he counted himself and Mr. Smith and Mr. Smith as the three BIG things :)

Jarred needs to sit before the RED USER to monitor our speculations, meanwhile...

Axel

[Häakon]

Don't forget the mattebox!

[purefilm]

This is an exciting time for us all. I can't wait to see what Red pulls out this year NAB.

I wish I could be there but unfortunately it is not possible.

I am excited to see what build 16 is going to be all about. I could speculate, and say more DR, lowlight, and blue channel fix, I am just happy with what Red has done up till now. Hey it beats the camera I was using hands down, which is no camera.

Keep surprising me Red! I love it!

Good Luck to your future I know it is going to be amazing ride!

[Robin Balas]

Note, given a 12-bit A/D, they can't get more than 12 stops DR without using pre-A/D nonlinearity, which would mean a change in hardware plus a change in philosophy- doesn't seem that likely. Remember that the DR as it exists now is 11+ stops "total" when you disregard noise. Most people do care about noise at some level, so the "effective" or "usable" DR is lower. So there's plenty of room for usable DR improvement without the "total" DR changing at all.

I hate to be a partykiller regarding the future DR gains Mr. Jannard could achieve but so many seem to think several stops more of DR is simple to achieve.
First a 12-bit A/D doesn't tell you anything about the DR. It could limit the DR if an inferior A/D is used, like a 10-bit A/D on a 10-bit chip, but it will never increase you're DR. A good A/D should be several bits better than the chip to oversample enough to render the lowest stops properly. So if RED uses a 12-bit A/D the sensor is likely giving 9-10-bits max. (real life use) without excessive noise if the designers have done a good job, and they seem to have done that so far by the enthusiasm on this forum.

It is the sensor characteristics which dictates DR. Divide saturation point by noisefloor (photoncount or electroncount) do a log base2 and you get your stops of DR. Or divide the sensor S/N dB by 6 and you also have your Stops of DR - although this is in theory only - as how discerning will the lowermost stop be with only 1 luminance level? Its liek monochrome bitmap, barely doable with a good dither.

My personal experience with MF stills photo CCD's (Leaf Aptus) is you need at least 16 levels (4bits) to render any detail in the deepest shadows without getting posterization and other gunk forming. So the practical max DR with renderd details in all stops on my LEAF back is 7-8 stops (theoretically or the practical pixelpeeper way is 10,5 stops). This sensor uses an 16-bit A/D but DALSA states "only" 11+ bits of usefull info from this sensor and claims its one of the best available. 11+ -4 is 7+ If anyone expects the laws of physics to change by a firmware upgrade they will most likely be disappointed. To get more DR out of the mysterium chip it is probably the de-bayering software, the contrast curve used and filmbased users knowledge that needs an upgrade or to be tweaked, not the camera. Mysterium S/N is about 67dB or was it less? That should relate very well to the 11 stops of theoretical DR - but realworld DR must be lower for the darkest stops to render smoothly above the noise floor. I would expect a live image to render deeper than a still frame as the noise jumps around from frame to frame and lets your eye/brain see through further, so possibly a stop or more could be gained vs. stills. It is strange thought that although the advances in lowering the noisefloor has been tremendous through the last generations of chips (they are now like 9-16 eV), but it is all lost on a similarly decreasing saturation point (100.000 - 60.000eV) due to more megapixels due to the smaller sensel/pixel area which can store the charge.

Maybe the mysterium2 chip will optimize both saturation point and noisefloor to new heights (like 9eV floor and 200.000 eV sat.point with large sensels/pixels would yield 86-87dB S/N and 14+ stops of DR, but if the current S/N numbers is 65/67 the current Mysterium is totally in line with the current cmos chips used in high end dSLR's and will NEVER be able to smoothly render 13 stops as some people seem to hope for. Please consider that an image with 14 stops of DR would look very washed out for more normal scenes and require heavy contrast enhancements clipping to look good.
But keep in mind I am a stills photographer, engineer and consultant - and no RED expert, so everything could in theory run on different physics. But in practice I think a sensor is still a sensor and the laws of physics regarding this application is like it have always been.

Filmbased movie photographers should try to look and learn to the last 5-6 years of advancements in the RAW stills photo workflow and techniques, and learn to be a master in tweaking the RAW footage in post. And getting the new lightmeter (http://www.sekonic.com/products/products.asp?ID=131) from Sekonic which can be calibrated with a custom target and a PC to each ISO/curve on your camera. Then you can measure and shoot on the very limit of your RAW files DR repeatably and with success. Accept there is a fundamentally different aproach to digital RAW captures wheater stills or movie photography.

Note that I consider the RED camera suitable for a lot of what I shoot as a stills photographer and that would give me both stills and clips to sell - I think commercial stills photographers are in for a RED revolution and we will be gaining new territory and probably loose some as well, but life will be more interesting with RED than without. I will wait it out however and wait until late in the year before ordering my RED which will be my new location stills camera 1. and 2. a movie cam...
MHO.

[Joe Vinson]

Let's not get carried away...

Jim

2-3 second faster boot time! User-variable cooling fan speed! Built-in automatic encoding for YouTube!

The future is NOW!

[Bang WOW Bang]

Build 16 is one of the three "small" new things at the RED booth... there will also be three "BIG" new things.

Jim

3+3 = more than 8 that I can give from HK-CHINA. guess what !! before NAB 2008.

I know my RED answer ......I don't now right from wrong.

Bang WOW Bang
WOW Digitainment
HKG

[Dane Brehm]

Dare I say a particular camera I work with uses a 32bit fixed point A/D converter and is capable of 13.5 stops which is more then film.....

Build 15 has been a whole new enlightenment as far as what the Red is capable of, so I'm sure 16 will be less about more latitude and more about fps. The Red Channel used to be the quietest channel and now it alot noiser but if thats what it takes to give me 3.5 stops over I'll take it!

DP Art Adams did a great tungsten latitude test with build 15b (2.1.7).

http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/aadams/red_build_15_flesh_tone_latitude_test_under_tungst en_light/

[jbeale]

Regarding noise performance, has everyone seen this photo?
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=11353

It's just a test chart, and we don't know the details (lighting color temp, post-processing etc). But have a look at the noise (if you can call it that) in the R,G,B channels.

They haven't said if this is from built 16 (but they didn't say it's not :-) Jarred did aver that it is an actual recorded image frame, and not a CGI render as you might suspect.

[jbeale]

Dare I say a particular camera I work with uses a 32bit fixed point A/D converter and is capable of 13.5 stops which is more then film.....

I'm guessing I'm misunderstanding something, because there is no A/D converter that comes even close to 32 bits of resolution (=> 192 dB dynamic range!). Post-processing signals in 32-bit fixed point is of course possible, but that is unrelated to the resolution of the original A/D, which sets an upper bound on the linear range of your data. The highest I've heard of for video rate A/D is 16 bits, and the operating SNR you get in practice is always lower than just the output word size.

[James T Mather]

Bar hearing that Build 16 will debut at NAB and be in alpha - do we have any idea when it will be available to the great unwashed masses?

Thanks

James

[Bang WOW Bang]

I am supersitutes that Build 16 will be released on the 16th April @NAB.


WOW
STEWART